


I Was Busy Thinkin' 'Bout (Girls)

by Linsky



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Angst, Cunnilingus, Everyone's a girl, F/F, First Time, Internalized Homophobia, Masturbation, Pining, Scissoring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-03 16:39:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12752118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: Jonny looks away quickly, cheeks going hot. She knows better than to stare at other girls’ breasts in the locker room.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A.K.A. the lesbian AU nobody asked for. Events of the rookie season somewhat fudged, because AU.
> 
> Warning for lots of het sex that Jonny consents to but doesn’t like.
> 
> (P.S. In my mind, Jonny in this story looks a lot like [Hilary Knight](http://www.espn.com/photo/2014/0707/mag14_bww_hillaryknight02_576x752.jpg).)
> 
> A MILLION BELATED THANKS to Celly1995 for the beta!!

Jonny’s fourteen when Meghan Troy shows up to practice with a new sports bra.

Before this, everyone’s always had the same kind: a one-piece stretchy thing that smashes your breasts down and keeps them from getting in the way when you play. Jonny’s never paid much attention to them. But she happens to be looking over when Meghan takes her shirt off before practice, and this one…

It’s different. Meghan’s breasts are held down, but they’re still separate. Still round. Held high on her chest, visible as separate shapes even after she pulls on her Under Armour.

Jonny looks away quickly, cheeks going hot. She knows better than to stare at other girls’ breasts in the locker room.

Except…her eyes keep sneaking back. Meghan’s breasts are about the size of apples and really nice and smooth, outlined in clinging Under Armour, and Jonny can’t look away. It’s like—like there’s something about the lines of those breasts that Jonny’s eyes want.

Jonny bites her lip and goes back to tying her skates. They have a game to play. She has an all-time team scoring record to win.

She thinks about it again that night, though, when she’s lying in bed. She remembers what Meghan’s breasts looked like in that bra, and a weird warm feeling spreads through her stomach. She thinks about what it might feel like if—if Meghan pressed her into the lockers, maybe. Just that: Meghan coming towards her and pushing her against the lockers and holding her there with her body. The thought of it makes Jonny’s breath whoosh out of her. Meghan would push up against her, and her breasts would press against Jonny’s chest—maybe even against Jonny’s own breasts, soft and full and—

She’s breathing really fast, and her pulse is fluttering in her ears. She’s never felt like this before, and it’s scary. She rolls over and buries her face in the pillow and goes to sleep.

***

The next summer, her mom takes her to get makeup.

“You have to learn if you want to be in the NHL,” her mom tells her just after the summer starts. “You think Jo Sakic goes around without makeup?”

Jonny scowls down at the t-shirts she’s folding. “It’s dumb,” she says.

“It’s a lot of fun,” her mom says. “You’ll see.”

It’s not fun. David gets to stay home and watch TV, and Jonny has to go to the mall with her mom. Just because—well, okay. She guesses it makes up for it, that she has the chance to be in the NHL someday and he doesn’t.

Still, right now that means she has to sit in an uncomfortable chair and have strange women poke at her face. Jonny doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and that makes her frown because she hates not knowing things.

“Don’t do that, you’ll get lines,” her mom says, smoothing the space between Jonny’s eyebrows as the makeup artist comes back with something made of shiny metal.

“We’ll get better results if we curl your eyelashes first,” the woman says, coming at Jonny’s face with the metal thing, and Jonny flinches backwards so hard she almost comes off the chair.

“Um, maybe not that,” she says, and they both smile like she’s being silly.

“It doesn’t hurt,” her mom says. “Here, just sit still.”

Her mom holds her shoulders while the woman clamps the metal thing around Jonny’s eyelashes. It doesn’t hurt, but the woman’s fingers touch Jonny’s face and make her want to pull away again.

When it’s all over, Jonny has a bag full of a dozen different bottles and pallets and a face she doesn’t recognize.

“You look beautiful,” her mom says to her, and all Jonny can think is that she looks like she’s wearing a mask. It’s like the time years ago when she and David were playing animals and decided to draw the animal faces on themselves with Magic Markers. Except that time, her mom got mad instead of telling her how beautiful she looked.

“The boys will love it,” the makeup lady says with a wink, and Jonny rolls her eyes. As if she has time for boys.

Her mom packs up some of the bottles and tubes in a little bag and tells Jonny that’s what she should carry around for everyday wear. “The full set is for special occasions,” she says.

Even the smaller bag looks like a lot to Jonny. She thinks about not putting it on the next day after practice, but her mom is picking her up and is going to notice if she doesn’t. So she joins the row of other girls at the mirrors and tries not to stab herself anywhere important.

“Ooh, is that the Clinique lip liner?” Kelsey asks when Jonny tries to remember what the pencil thingy is for.

“Um, I guess?” Jonny says.

“I have Cover Girl, but I don’t think it’s shiny enough,” Kelsey says. She pulls out her own pencil thingy and draws a line around the edge of her lips. Jonny watches so that she can figure out how to put it on herself. Kelsey’s lips are pink and soft-looking, and the lip liner makes them stand out against her skin. “You see?”

She tilts her mouth towards Jonny, lips parted slightly, and Jonny’s stomach does something funny.

“No, I like that one a lot,” Jonny says, and she turns back to her own mirror.

“Let’s see yours,” Kelsey says, watching as Jonny brings the pencil to her lips. Jonny can feel her eyes on her the whole time she’s outlining her mouth.

It still looks dumb on her, she thinks, but it does look kind of okay on Kelsey.

***

The thing with _Cruel Intentions_ happens that fall.

“I can’t believe you’ve never seen this,” Talia says. “Ryan Phillippe is soooo hot.”

They’re all crowded together onto a couch in Talia’s parents’ living room. Becks has her head in Jonny’s lap and Kelsey’s arm is draped over her shoulders, because they’re a hockey team and this is what they do. Everyone coos over Ryan Phillippe, whose character is a major asshole, and Jonny tries not to stare when Sarah Michelle Gellar runs her fingers down her chest.

That’s sort of been a problem, lately—staring at things she shouldn’t. Jonny’s not sure what’s going on with it, but she’s hoping it’ll go away.

It’s all fine until Sarah Michelle Gellar is sitting on a picnic blanket in the park with Selma Blair. They’re talking about kissing, and it comes out that Selma Blair doesn’t know how. SMG leans in, and…

Jonny knows theoretically that sometimes girls kiss each other. Like, there obviously are lesbians in the world. She’s just never really thought about it as an actual thing, and she’s definitely never _seen_ it. But they’re doing it now, the two women on the screen: their lips brush together, and Jonny’s stomach goes tight with shock.

They pull back on the screen. “It was nothing,” Selma Blair says, all cheerful, and Sarah Michelle Gellar leans in again and this time—

This time they’re kissing with open mouths, lush and wet, and Jonny almost swallows her tongue. Her whole body is fizzing, like she swallowed a case of soda, and heat is creeping up her thighs. On the screen, the two girls’ tongues are dipping into each other’s mouths, their lips catching on each other slowly. Jonny…Jonny wants to watch this forever.

“Ewww,” Kelsey says next to her.

“I know, super gay,” Talia says. “It’s, like, the only bad part of this movie.”

“Someone make it go away,” Becks says, laughing, and Kelsey covers her eyes for her.

Jonny doesn’t say anything. Her skin feels so hot she’s surprised none of the other girls notice.

She’s distracted for the rest of the movie, caught up in that hot wash of feeling, and she asks to borrow the DVD when she leaves. “My brother hasn’t seen it,” she says. Maybe it’s a lie, maybe it’s not—she actually has no idea—but her cheeks are burning, and she feels like she’s doing something wrong when Talia hands it over.

When she gets home, she shuts her door and loads the DVD into her laptop and cues up the scene in the park. She watches it and feels heat shivers spread over her body, and then she watches it again, and again, until she’s breathing hard and her body is, like, _throbbing._

It’s strongest between her legs. Jonny presses against herself there, and it makes something good ripple all through her. She does it again and bites her lip.

She could…she could take her underwear off and touch herself there. That’s a thing people do, right?

Jonny gets out of her underwear and lies down under her blankets. She’s shaking a little. She’s not totally sure what she’s supposed to do—just stick her fingers in there?—but she slides her hand down from her belly into the fuzz of her pubic hair and slips the tip of her finger between her folds.

It’s wet in there. Really wet. Not like water—thicker than that, slippery. Slick. Beneath the slick, everything’s sort of soft and warm and it tingles when she runs her fingers over it.

She’s put in tampons before. She knows how to find her hole. But she’s never stuck anything in there when everything’s hot and slick like this.

It feels…interesting. Smooth like muscle, mostly. There’s a patch when she curls her finger up that’s a little rougher, and when she rubs on it she feels strange. Not bad, but not exactly good, either. Like she’s pressing on nerves somewhere, and it doesn’t hurt but it has something in common with pressing on a bruise. It doesn’t seem to be getting better or different when she rubs at it for a minute, so she stops.

Jonny takes her finger out, obscurely disappointed. She’s not sure what she expected it to feel like, but with all the fuss about getting fucked, she thought it would be better than that. Or at least more exciting.

She runs her fingers over her folds instead, and that’s a little better. She at least feels like she has more nerve endings there than she does inside. There’s a spot at the top of her folds that’s almost ticklish, and she goes back to it, presses on it, and then has to bite down on her lip to keep from crying out.

Okay—okay, so maybe this was what people were talking about. She presses there again and everything goes shivery, mostly around her groin but also her through arms and legs and chest. Her face is doing something dumb, probably, but she can’t help it. It feels so good that she presses there again, and again, an up-and-down motion that makes her hips hitch automatically and her breath come faster.

She thinks about the movie scene, about Sarah Michelle Gellar and Selma Blair kissing, and her whole stomach floods with brightness. The next press of her fingers makes everything white-hot. She presses down harder and harder, her hips rocking up in search of that delicious heat, and she thinks: _tongues—their mouths sliding together—two girls—_

It’s like her body goes out of her control: her hips start moving all on their own, spasming. Her mouth drops open and she gasps for air and the most amazing feeling spreads over her body, like every single nerve is pulsing in pleasure.

When it’s over, she lies back and stares at the ceiling, breathing hard and with no idea what just happened.

Her fingers are dripping. She doesn’t have any tissues within reach, so she gets up after a minute or two and goes over to her dresser. She feels a little shaky, and the wetness between her legs feels weird when she walks.

She wipes off her fingers and then wipes herself down below. It’s like wiping herself after she pees, except that what comes away is sticky and slick instead of wet. Her skin is sensitive enough that the drag of the tissue is almost too much.

There’s still a warm feeling in her body when she goes to lie down again, like she’s really really comfortable and a little sleepy. There’s a little bit of worry tickling at the edge of her mind—the idea that this is a problem—but it won’t be. It’ll be fine. It has to be fine: she’s going to be in the NHL.

***

Jonny has sex for the first time in college, with a guy T.J. sets her up with—someone from T.J.’s history seminar. Jonny lets slip once when they’re drunk that she’s never had sex, and T.J. apparently takes that as a personal challenge. When she presents Jonny with the guy, at a party the team’s throwing, he seems reasonably polite and articulate and Jonny thinks, sure, why not. Better to get it over with.

It hurts. Kind of a lot, actually, but Jonny doesn’t say anything. She’s a hockey player; she’s good at working through the pain.

It’s kind of awkward, though, on top of the pain. Jonny’s lying there and this guy, Henry, is on top of her, sticking his dick inside of her and making these ridiculous faces and sounds, and this is something people do for fun?

When he collapses on her, it’s a relief. “You came, right?” he asks as he grabs the condom and rolls off her.

“Yeah, of course,” she says.

She goes out with him again. She lets him fuck her another time, then stops returning his texts, and when T.J. asks what happened, Jonny just makes a face.

“Eh, yeah, he seemed kind of lame,” T.J. says, throwing her arm around Jonny’s shoulders. “We’ll find you someone better.”

T.J. makes it a point to introduce Jonny to at least one guy at every party they go to over the next couple of months. Jonny laughs and flirts and pretends to be interested in their falling-down pants and awkward stubble.

It’s at one of these parties, when she’s just gotten away from a football player from T.J.’s ceramics class, that she meets Natalie.

“Hey, you look like you could use someone to dance with,” this girl says, smiling up at her. She’s like a head shorter than Jonny, standing really close in a miniskirt and a low-cut top, and—is she _flirting?_

Jonny’s startled enough that she doesn’t even think about how this will look when Natalie leads her into the mob of people dancing. Natalie’s small and cute and has a little turned-up nose and a smile Jonny wants to keep looking at, and her hands are on Jonny’s hips. Her breasts brush up against Jonny’s chest as they dance to a slow pulsing beat.

It’s when Natalie’s hands slide down to her ass that Jonny jumps and remembers to look around for witnesses. T.J. isn’t anywhere to be seen, but who knows when she’ll come back or who else might be looking. “Um, do you maybe want to get out of here?” Jonny shouts over the music.

They go back to Natalie’s room, Natalie casting little bright glances at her along the way. The door is barely shut when Natalie’s kissing her.

Jonny’s never kissed a girl before. She expected in a vague way that it would be different from kissing guys, but she didn’t anticipate the degree: didn’t expect the way her whole body would get charged up, the way Natalie’s tongue in her mouth would make her toes tingle and her stomach flip. She only had one beer tonight, but she feels like she’s drunk.

“Have you done this before?” Natalie asks when they separate for air. Her lips are shiny from the kiss.

“Of course,” Jonny says.

“No, I mean, with a girl,” Natalie says, and Jonny feels herself going red. Natalie laughs and leans in to nip at Jonny’s lip. “Come on, I’ll show you how to eat someone out.”

Getting eaten out is so different from sex with a guy that it might as well be on another planet. It’s like touching herself but a thousand times better, and everything Natalie does feels good until something shifts and everything Natalie does feels _amazing_ and Jonny wants to, like, marry her or buy her a pony or something because this is just fucking incredible. She says so to Natalie in the aftermath and Natalie laughs and tells her to change places.

Eating Natalie out is a challenge, but in a way that feels familiar from hockey: do the play, get the feedback, try it again a little better. Jonny likes the way she tastes and feels under her tongue, and more than that she likes the little noises Natalie makes and the way she jerks against Jonny’s mouth. When Natalie comes, Jonny’s so worked up again that she climbs up to kiss Natalie and gets a handful of her breast and starts rocking her hips down to get friction until it builds into a delicious grind.

It’s nothing like with Henry. Every sound Natalie makes only makes it better, and Jonny finds herself cataloging Natalie’s responses: all the little hitches in her breath and the way her mouth drops open and her eyes flutter shut. Their sweaty skin slides together and Jonny loves it.

She conks out next to Natalie on the bed after they come again, and the next morning they make out a little with morning breath before Jonny gets up to go home. “Let me get your number before you go,” Natalie says, and Jonny hesitates.

“It can’t really…be anything,” Jonny says. Then, “I’m a hockey player.”

“Oh,” Natalie says. “Right.”

“Sorry,” Jonny says. It feels inadequate for the situation, but Jonny’s not sure what else to say. 

“Well, see you around,” Natalie says with a little half-smile, and Jonny remembers how good she looked gasping underneath her last night, but—she’s getting drafted by the NHL this spring. Even doing this much was a mistake.

***

“Where’d you disappear to last night?” T.J. asks her at lunch the next day.

Jonny opens her mouth to deliver a lie—then realizes she doesn’t have to. “Hooked up,” she says, and T.J. grins and punches her shoulder and demands to know who the guy is. Jonny just smiles mysteriously and lets her think what she wants to.

The rumor of a mystery guy carries Jonny through a few months, and then she does hook up with a couple of the guys T.J. sends her way. Mostly when T.J. gets after her for studying too much and being too much of a goody-two-shoes. Jonny doesn’t care so much about that part of her reputation—knows she’ll be cast as the responsible one no matter what—but she doesn’t want T.J. to start looking deeper. So every once in a while she takes someone home from a party and lets him fuck her.

After Natalie it’s both better and worse. Worse, because she knows what she’s missing—knows that with the right person, those ridiculous facial expressions and jerky movements would be hot instead of awkward. Better, because at least she can close her eyes and picture something else.

Actually, it’s probably creepy, the amount of time she spends picturing Natalie relative to the amount of time they spent together. It’s just that Jonny doesn’t have any other reference points. She mixes it up—thinks about actresses and models and, one or two shameful times, other girls on her team—but Natalie’s the only real-life experience she has to draw on.

It helps. It’s not perfect, obviously, because the guys look and feel and sound pretty different from anything Jonny wants, but if she closes her eyes and imagines really hard, the guy fucking her can become a girl with a strap-on, breasts bouncing and pretty mouth opening on a gasp, and it actually feels good for a few strokes. Until the guy makes a noise and the illusion breaks.

It’s all okay, though. This is just another thing she has to do, on top of the weight training and the protein shakes and the early-morning runs. Jonny’s used to using her body to reach her goals.

***

The media coverage at the college level isn’t too intense. There’s attention, of course—particularly on Jonny, as a top draft prospect, and then the next year after she’s gone third overall—but there isn’t major scrutiny of every aspect of her life. Not until she signs an ELC with the Blackhawks.

“So, Jonny,” one reporter asks during the preseason. “Any college sweethearts we should know about?”

Jonny can feel her face getting hot and hopes it isn’t visible. She’s been expecting this question, though. “Um, no. Really been focusing on hockey the past few years.”

“Well, I’m sure the men of Chicago will be happy to hear that,” the reporter says with a grin. Jonny gives him a forced smile and catches a wince from one of the PR people in the background.

It’s not a surprise when they make her go through media training. At least it’s not just her—all the rookies have to go through a standard set of courses: personal presentation, finances, PR. The personal presentation is bad enough, with a lady with bright-red lipstick talking to them about when makeup is and isn’t expected and how they should make sure to get their game-day clothes tailored. But it’s the PR lecture that makes Jonny squirm. There’s all this stuff about “presenting a stable front to the world,” which Jonny realizes, after about ten minutes, means don’t get your picture on Deadspin, but do show up places sometimes with arm candy.

“It’s such a dumb set of standards,” she says to Sharpy later that night, when the team is out at a bar for mandatory bonding.

Sharpy bumps her shoulder. “They just want the world to know what a nice Canadian girl you are.”

Easy for Sharpy to say. She actually _is_ a nice Canadian girl. Jonny’s seen her boyfriend, Andy, and he looks like he should be on the cover of GQ or something. And then there’s Sharpy herself, who constantly looks like she stepped out of a shampoo commercial.

“I don’t see why it’s any of their business,” Jonny mumbles.

“Aw, baby Tazer, are you worried about picking up?” Sharpy says with a mocking grin. “Don’t worry. I’m sure some of us will share our extensive expertise.”

“Go to hell,” Jonny says, batting her away.

“You can’t possibly be any more embarrassing about it than Peekaboo,” Sharpy says.

Jonny casts an eye at the bar, where Tricia is chatting up this ridiculously tall guy in a flannel shirt. Her head is tipped back, blond curls tumbling down her back, and her eyes are outlined in something sparkly that make them look bluer than ever.

She looks like the kind of girl Jonny will never be. She also looks kind of ridiculous. “It’s like she didn’t even hear the part about not ending up on Deadspin,” Jonny says.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sharpy says. “You two just have different styles. You’ll find your groove.”

Jonny forces a chuckle. As long as the team never finds out what kind of groove that is, she’ll be all right.


	2. Chapter 2

The media training does actually help, for all its BS about image. This PR rep named Cindy takes Jonny through a string of mock interviews, and they turn out to be really useful, because the team keeps calling on her to speak to the press.

“Your face,” Tricia says, laughing, when they get out of a joint interview after a practice one morning.

Jonny scowls at her. “What about my face?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Tricia sticks her tongue between her teeth, smirking. “Are you trying to communicate that the state of the team makes you constipated? Because, if so—”

She cuts off when Jonny grabs at her, just missing a handful of golden hair as Tricia squirms away, still laughing.

The shitty thing is, Jonny knows she’s right. She’s watched some of her interview tape, and it’s painful. It wouldn’t be quite so bad—a lot of athletes aren’t great at on-camera stuff—except that she keeps having to do it next to Tricia.

Tricia is…well, she’s the kind of girl GMs dream about when they dream of media courage. She has a different color of eyeshadow every time Jonny sees her—and even when she’s not wearing makeup, she has her eyes and her curls and her heart-shaped face and her way of looking up at you and blinking like she thinks she’s Reese Witherspoon in _Legally Blonde_ or something. She’s totally a little shit, but she plays to the camera people like she’s flirting in a bar, and she has the talent to back it up.

And she’s _small._ Not that small—she’s still an NHL player—but five-six or so, which makes her a lot smaller than Jonny.

She’s small, and she’s obscenely talented, two things which almost never go together. Tricia can carry the puck to the net against a pack of hulking defenders, and as soon as she’s off the ice she looks like she should be wearing a miniskirt and bouncing out of a sorority house somewhere. No surprise she was drafted first overall.

Jonny feels massive next to her. Size isn’t exactly frowned upon in the NHL, but she can see the way every reporter’s eye comes to rest on Tricia. The way they drink in her presence. This golden pixie with a light-blue sundress that matches her eyes and a goal-scoring record in the O.

Jonny’s awkward when the reporters joke with her. She forgets how to smile naturally and laughs too loudly or too quietly or in the wrong place. She says her lines like she’s reading them off a script she’s never seen before. And there’s Tricia, bantering like it’s as easy as breathing and making everyone love her like she isn’t the annoying shit Jonny has to room with or the embarrassing disaster who shows up around ten o’clock at a bar.

“So, Jonny,” one reporter asks during the preseason. “It’s Jonny, not Joanna?”

Jonny nods and waits for the question, then realizes that that was it. “Um, yes.” She tries to smile the way the PR person told her to: pleasantly, not too wide. She’s not sure she hits it. “When I was little, you know, I couldn’t say Joanna, so I called myself Jonny, and it stuck.”

The reporter smiles like Jonny’s said something charming. “You’ve never thought about a different nickname? Jo, maybe, after Sakic?”

Jonny shifts uncomfortably. It’s her name; no, she hasn’t thought about changing it. But Tricia pokes her head into the conversation before Jonny can say anything. “She doesn’t need it. Haven’t you heard? They’re calling her Tazer now.”

The reporter’s face lights up, and it’s all Jonny can do not to roll her eyes. Tricia grins, lip gloss shiny and perfect. “Yeah, some of the girls thought her eyes could probably stop opposing D-men in their tracks, plus, you know, Toews, so—Tazer.”

“So is that your secret weapon?” the reporter asks. “Tazer’s eyes?”

“They’re not—” Jonny starts to object, but Tricia steps on her foot, still smiling.

“Oh, yeah, the other team won’t know what hit ’em,” Tricia says. “Not that we plan to need it, you know, we’re gonna try to be awesome anyway.”

Everyone smiles, totally won over and not even thinking about Jonny’s choice of nickname. Jonny has no idea how Tricia just _did_ that.

Jonny mumbles a grudging thank you later that night when they head to their hotel room, and Tricia waves her off. “You can do that, too. You just need to relax.”

“It’s not that easy,” Jonny says as she throws her stuff on the bed farther from the door.

“Sure it is.” Tricia says, picking Jonny’s stuff off the bed and putting it on the other one.

“Hey. That’s my bed,” Jonny says.

“Right now it’s our practice stage,” Tricia says. “Sit.”

Jonny sits down across from her, warily. “Practice for what?”

“Joanna Toews,” Tricia says. “How do you feel about the Blackhawks’ chances this season?”

Jonny feels her back straightening up. “I think we’ve made a lot of great strides,” she says. “If we keep up at this pace, we’re definitely going to be able to—”

“No, no.” Tricia cuts her off. “Jonny. How do you feel about our chances this season?”

Jonny stares at her for a moment. She’s not quite following the thread here. “Um. I mean, you know I want us to go all the way.”

“And do you think we will?”

“I—well, we’re rebuilding.” They’ve already talked about this, a lot; Jonny isn’t sure what else to say. “It’ll be tough, but I think we have a solid chance. If we can hit our stride soon enough.”

“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.” Tricia smirks. “I think your voice had actual inflection there.”

“I was just talking to you, though.”

“So pretend the reporter is me.” Tricia lowers her voice a little. “Jonny, your team is rebuilding. Do you think you can go all the way this year?”

Jonny narrows her eyes. “So now I’m pretending you’re a reporter who I’m pretending is you?”

Tricia hits her knee. “Just answer the question.”

“It’s hard to say,” Jonny says. She can hear her voice slipping back into its media cadence, and she tries to fight it. “This team has a lot of talent, and if we can hit our stride, I think we have a good chance.”

Tricia tilts her head. “Maybe the problem is your mouth isn’t moving enough.” She gets closer and puts her hand on Jonny’s face, squishing her cheeks together. “Try this. Hi, Jonny. How are you today?” she says in an exaggerated voice, moving Jonny’s mouth while she does it.

Jonny glares at her. “Why would I be saying that to myself?”

Tricia giggles, dimples showing. “Come onnnn. Just try it?”

“This is dumb,” Jonny says, moving her mouth in the exaggerated way Tricia showed her.

“Well, it’s a start,” Tricia says. “But I’m not sure that’s the _best_ thing to say to reporters.”

“Fuck off,” Jonny says, swatting at her.

“At least, not until you have a few goals under your belt,” Tricia continues. “But, I mean, I’ll probably have more by then, so you still won’t be a big enough deal to get away with—”

Jonny tackles her to the bed, and they wrestle for a minute until Jonny gets her hands on Tricia’s upper arms and pins her.

“Say it,” Jonny says while Tricia tries to squirm away and/or bite Jonny’s arms. “Come on—ow—just admit it.”

“Fine,” Tricia says, drawing it out. “If it means so much to you, fine. I’ll admit that you can tell the reporters they’re dumb.”

She beams cheekily, and Jonny scowls down at her. “Fucking right, I can,” she says, throwing her weight a little so that her hands push harder against Tricia’s biceps. “And we’re going all the fucking way this year. Don’t you forget it.”

“ _There_ you go,” Tricia says, and Jonny’s not sure what she’s talking about until she adds, “That one had inflection.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Jonny says, rolling off.

Tricia sits up, still grinning, and stretches her arms out. “Hm, I almost felt that,” she says. “Maybe someday soon you’ll be as strong as my thirteen-year-old sister.”

She flounces over to the other bed and collapses on it. Jonny lies back and waits for her heart rate to go back to normal and the weird tingly feeling to drain out of her stomach.

***

Jonny tries to do a better job the next time she has to give an interview. She says a few things about their preseason performance and aims for a slightly more animated tone than her usual. Picturing Tricia smirking up at her does help, though she worries a little that the reporters will start to think she’s mad at them.

She does spend a lot of time mad, that first month. The team is good—filled with good people—but they lose as often as they win, and it puts everyone on edge.

“Better than October of last year,” Sharpy says, and it’s probably meant to cheer them up, but Jonny doesn’t find it very cheering.

She and Tricia get in each other’s faces a lot, but it’s not because Jonny’s looking for a fight, no matter what Seabs says. It’s just that Tricia spends a lot of time being wrong.

“Fuck’s sake, Jonny,” she says in late October, storming into the tunnel after a second period in which they did nothing to erase the Avs’ two-goal lead. “Get me the fucking puck, will you?”

“I was,” Jonny says, through her teeth. She doesn’t need this right now.

“You were not,” Tricia says. “You keep trying to take it the net yourself, and I get that you’re good, but no one’s that good one-on-three. You know what I can do with the fucking puck, so get it to me.”

Jonny stares at her. Tricia’s standing in the tunnel, still short even in her skates, glaring up at Jonny, and you don’t talk yourself up like that if you want to make it in the NHL. Or—maybe you can, if you have golden hair and look like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. Jonny can’t. “You weren’t open,” she says.

“I fucking was,” Tricia says, taking a step forward, like she’s about to sock Jonny in the mouth. Jonny feels her whole body strung tight, all the missed opportunities of the second period combining with the way Tricia’s glaring at her, rocked forward on her skates like she’s about to leap out of them.

“Get yourself open in the third, and maybe we’ll see what you can do,” Jonny says, and Tricia nods, sharply, like that’s what she was waiting for.

Tricia gets herself open in the third. Jonny gets her the puck. They slam into each other in the celly, and Jonny practically lifts her off her feet. “Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about,” Tricia says afterward, smiley and drunk, dimples popping in her cheeks, and Jonny can’t even be mad. She stares for a second too long before looking away.

***

NHL players pick up kind of a lot. Not all of them—some of them have boyfriends or husbands to go home to—but the single ones. It’s a funny PR dance, Jonny comes to realize: they’re not supposed to look like they sleep around, but there’s a sideways winking expectation that they will and an unspoken understanding that it would be weird if they didn’t. On the team, it’s just assumed that everyone wants to do it all the time. Jonny manages to sidestep it for a while by claiming she’s focusing on hockey, but she knows that won’t fly forever.

“What do you think of the guy by the bar?” Tricia asks. They’ve just won a game in Toronto, and they’re out taking advantage of the lower drinking age.

Jonny looks at the guy. It’s a guy, who looks approximately like the dozen other guys she’s seen Tricia hit on so far this season. “Sure, go for it.”

“Not for me,” Tricia says. “For you.”

Jonny does a double-take. “What?”

“Yeah, come on, I’m looking out for my liney.” Tricia pokes Jonny in the waist. “So whaddya think?”

Jonny pretends to study the guy while she thinks. She’s going to have to do this eventually. But it’s Toronto, and she doesn’t want to get lost in a strange city making it back from a stranger’s place. And curfew’s in an hour. “Eh,” she says.

“Really?” Tricia says, head tilted, looking at the guy, like she can’t imagine anyone turning that down.

“Maybe I just have better taste than you,” Jonny says.

Tricia opens her mouth to respond, like this is anything other than an obvious truism, and Sharpy laughs. “Getting your bad taste all over Toes?” she says, shaking her head in mock disappointment. “Come on, Peeks, we talked about you being less embarrassing, not more.”

“Like you could do better,” Tricia says.

“Um, you’ve met Andy, right?” Duncs says. “I’d say he’s a pretty solid argument for Sharpy’s taste.”

“Jonny’s gonna like the guys I pick better,” Tricia says, and it’s not until Sharpy’s grin stretches across her face like the fucking Cheshire Cat’s that Jonny realizes how far the situation has spun out of control.

It makes her feel a little sick to her stomach over the next few days when she thinks about it, the idea of her teammates picking out guys for her to hook up with. But it turns out to be a good thing, in a way. Jonny’s excuses for not trying to pick up were wearing thin; now she can refuse all she wants and pretend she’s doing it to piss off Tricia and Sharpy. 

“Jonny,” Tricia wheedles at a bar in St. Louis. “Come on. Just take a look at this guy. He’s super hot. I’d sleep with him.”

“So go sleep with him,” Jonny says.

Tricia leans in and pouts up at her. “I’m trying to make a _sacrifice_ here.”

Jonny stares at her, unimpressed.

Tricia stares back for a moment, tongue flicking over the candy-pink outlines of her lipstick. “Fine,” she says at last. “But if Sharpy’s cutting you in on her share of the betting pool, heads will roll.”

She flounces off to talk to the hot guy. Jonny sips her rum and Coke (thanks, Seabs) and definitely does not watch her go.

Sharpy leans over. “So, here’s what I think,” she says. “I think you’re using this whole thing as an excuse.”

Jonny almost chokes on her drink. “An excuse for what?”

Sharpy grins at her, wide, and knowing, and the bottom of Jonny’s stomach falls out. Sharpy knows. She—

“I think you’re scared you won’t be able to land anyone,” Sharpy says.

The adrenaline rushes out of Jonny’s stomach, leaving her shaky. “I am not scared.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sharpy leans in further, smile like a shark’s. “Then you won’t be afraid to prove it.”

Jonny knows what she’s doing here. Sharpy’s not exactly being subtle. But Jonny rises to the bait anyway. “I’m fucking boss at getting guys to go home with me.”

“Then how about that one?” Sharpy says, pointing to a guy at the end of the bar who’s looking down at his phone. “He looks kind of distracted. Might be a challenge.”

It’s shameless, how hard Sharpy’s trying to play this, but—Jonny’s getting sick of this shit. “Watch and learn,” she says, standing up.

She can practically feel Sharpy’s smugness on her back as she stalks towards the guy. She moderates her pace as she gets closer, since most guys don’t like it if you go up to them all angry and demand to sleep with them. Jonny’s actually pretty good at this, whatever Sharpy says. She thinks how she looks has something to do with it—but also, she’s just not intimidated by them. They don’t have anything she wants. She has no idea why that makes them fall all over her, but it usually works out for her when she wants it to.

Half an hour later, she and the guy are making out in the back of a cab, and she thinks maybe it’s not working out that well for her, all things considered. The guy’s kind of slobbery, and having his tongue in her mouth is such a gross invasion. Hell, half the time she doesn’t understand why people like kissing anyway—but then she thinks about another mouth, a different body pressed up against hers, and she can see the point.

Tom fingers her before he fucks her. “Is that good?” he asks, looking up from where he’s mouthing at her breast.

“Oh, yeah,” Jonny says, as his finger rubs against a random spot on the smooth insensitive muscle of her hole. “Right there…”

He fucks her with lube, and she closes her eyes, and it’s over soon enough.

***

Tricia’s pissed off at practice the next day. “I can’t believe you went with Sharpy’s guy over mine,” she says, swatting at Jonny with a shin protector.

Jonny grabs the shin protector out of her hand. “I just didn’t want to deprive you of that guy’s charms.”

Tricia scowls. “I have to let her pick my makeup for three days now.”

Jonny makes a face. “Why didn’t you just bet money?”

“You have no imagination,” Tricia says, and strips her shirt over her head.

She’s wearing a sports bra, and it’s nothing Jonny hasn’t seen a million times already, but for some reason her eye gets caught on the curve of Tricia’s waist into her hips, that fluid line where muscle ripples under the skin as she pulls her arms out of her shirt.

“Whatever,” Tricia says. “I’ll find the next guy for you.”

“Sure,” Jonny says, aiming for sarcastic, but she’s not sure how well she hits it.

***

Jonny’s expecting Sharpy’s makeup choices to result in Tricia wearing something garish, but she shows up for breakfast the next day in the most understated makeup Jonny’s ever seen on her.

Jonny must stare a second too long, because Tricia screws up her face. “Sharpy’s turn to pick,” she says.

“I know,” Jonny says without thinking. “It looks…”

Tricia sighs heavily. “Don’t even say it.”

It looks…really flattering, is the thing. Tricia’s barely wearing any more makeup than Jonny does, on days when a game doesn’t force her to be more formal: mascara, probably, since otherwise Tricia’s eyelashes are blond, and lip gloss, but no eyeshadow or bright lipstick, and other than that her skin just seems to be…glowing, somehow. Jonny’s seen Tricia without makeup enough times to know that that’s not her normal skin tone. Whatever Sharpy did to her, it’s so good it barely looks like makeup.

It looks unfamiliar. It looks amazing. Jonny keeps catching glimpses of her, throughout that day and the next two, and she can’t get used to it.

They go on the road the third day, and Tricia’s in a horrible mood as they get to their hotel room. Jonny kind of wants to lie back on her bed and stare at Tricia’s face, try to make it resolve into something normal, but Tricia keeps giving her mistrustful glances.

“What, are you gonna say it, too?” Tricia snaps, after a while.

Jonny was looking at her again, sneaking a glance, and she freezes, eyes wide. “Huh?”

“Go on,” Tricia says. She flops onto the bed angrily. “You’re, like, the only person who hasn’t said it. How much better I look like this, how Sharpy should have been doing my makeup for years—”

“I don’t like it,” Jonny blurts out.

Tricia looks at her, startled, then suspicious. “What…”

“It’s weird,” Jonny says. She hadn’t realized she quite felt like this until she said it. She’s seen Tricia without makeup, and with her normal makeup on, and both of those seem normal, but not this. Not this look that someone else picked. “It doesn’t look like you.”

“What do you mean?” Tricia still looks wary.

“It’s…” Jonny can’t quite articulate what she means. “Okay, so you wear a lot of bright colors. But that’s you, you know? Not like—not like you have to wear them. But that’s who you are, that you like those bright colors, and…” She has possibly never felt so dumb in her life.

Tricia’s grinning, though. “Yeah?”

Jonny’s cheeks are burning. “I mean, you know that, you’re the one who picks them,” she mumbles.

“Awww.” Tricia launches herself onto Jonny’s bed and tries to snuggle her, but Jonny kicks her away. Tricia ends up at the end of the bed, beaming. “You love my makeup. You secretly want me to give you a makeover.”

“Not in a million years,” Jonny says, but Tricia just keeps smiling. Jonny’s definitely lost this round.

Tricia shows up to team breakfast the next morning in sparkly red lipstick. Sharpy groans theatrically, and a bunch of the team offers her condolences, but Jonny can barely tear her eyes off that sparkly mouth.

If Tricia kissed her, the color would smear all over Jonny’s face. It might be the only time she’s ever actually wanted to wear lipstick.

***

Jonny knows how lucky she is, to be in the NHL. She tries to remind herself of that whenever the other stuff starts to feel like too much: the parts where she has to straighten her hair and curl her eyelashes and not look too long at other women’s breasts. She’s in the best hockey league in the world, playing a game that others would die for.

“It would never happen,” Sharpy’s saying firmly one day when Jonny walks into the locker room. “Pointless to talk about.”

Seabs rolls her eyes and turns around. “Jonny, back me up here,” she says. “Men in the NHL: possibility?”

Jonny shrugs. She hasn’t really thought about it that much. “I guess some of them would be good enough,” she says. “Henry Knight. Andrew Kessel. Julian Chu.”

Bicks makes a face. “They don’t have the right touch,” she says. “You’ve seen how the guys play. It’s all force, no finesse.”

“And they’re just not as good at teamwork,” Tricia says, throwing her arms around Jonny from the side and nuzzling her shoulder. Jonny makes a face and shoves her away, but not before her stomach does a neat little flip.

“They play okay together in the NMHL,” Seabs says.

“Wouldn’t it be kind of distracting?” Duncs says. “Having guys in the locker room, I mean.”

Jonny just manages to stop herself before she laughs out loud. Hey, if she could survive ten years of all-female locker rooms without getting distracted from the game…

“Nah, none of that is the real problem.” Sharpy stretches her legs out along the length of the bench and points her toes. “The real problem is that audiences just aren’t as interested in guys.”

There’s some truth to that, Jonny thinks. Men want to be able to watch talented women compete and fantasize about those women being theirs. That’s why she’s supposed to hook up with guys sometimes, show up places with one on her arm: because it’s an important part of the fantasy that she be available to men.

She hasn’t hooked up since that time in St. Louis. It’s only been a few weeks, but she’s already feeling like she doesn’t have any defense against her teammates’ suggestions that she check out certain guys when they go out.

“He looks like he could hold his own,” Tricia says, pointing to a strong-looking guy who probably has a few inches on Jonny. He’s been looking at her not so subtly throughout the evening.

“I don’t turn sex into a competition,” Jonny says.

“I bet you do.” Tricia smirks like she knows exactly how annoying she’s being. “I bet you don’t let them fuck you until they beat you at arm wrestling. Then you probably, like, make them do pushups on the floor, while you sit on the bed watching them, getting wetter and wetter—”

“Jesus, shut up,” Jonny says, feeling her cheeks get hot. She’s not getting turned on by this—can’t possibly be—but hearing Tricia talk about getting wet…

“It’s okay, Jonny,” Tricia says, leaning in and dropping her voice, still smirking like an idiot. “Whatever gets you there.”

Tricia’s breath is skating across her skin. “Fuck off,” Jonny says, and shoves her away and gets up from the table.

She’s not planning to do anything specific one she’s up. But her pulse is pounding in her groin, and she needs to burn energy like nobody’s business.

The strong-looking guy is just as strong as he looks, and Jonny lets him push her against the bed when they’re back in her room. She doesn’t want him, exactly, but she does want the push and pull of it. And she’s still wet enough from her conversation with Tricia that he doesn’t need much lube before he’s fucking her.

Jonny thinks about what Tricia might say about this if she were watching. “Not fighting back much,” maybe, with an annoying smirk, or—or maybe Tricia would be turned on. Tricia likes guys; she probably watches straight-person porn. Jonny could be that porn, right now. Tricia could be watching the way the guy’s cock is fucking into Jonny’s cunt; she could be looking at Jonny’s spread folds, at the wetness there, at the wetness that came from Tricia. Maybe she’d be getting wet herself. She’d slip her fingers into her folds—

Jonny works a hand over her clit, rubbing desperately now. Little tremors of pleasure are running through her stomach, her thighs: the idea of Tricia watching her, hungry-eyed, seeing the way Jonny’s touching herself. The two of them touching themselves in unison, maybe, matching rhythms. Speeding up until everything spills over like, oh God, oh fuck, like it’s doing now.

“Whoa,” the guy says a few minutes later, panting, still between her legs. “That was intense, yeah?”

Jonny blinks up at him, dazed. She has no idea what he’s even doing here.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See bottom of the chapter for spoilery note about slight dubcon!

Jonny can’t keep her eyes off Tricia, the next few weeks. She knows it’s dangerous: that she might get caught, yeah, but also that she might spiral downward into something she can’t pull back from. If she’s going to be thinking about women, they shouldn’t be her teammates.

Tricia’s just around all the time, is the thing, with her smooth creamy shoulders and the way her back tapers into her waist and that fucking mouth, the full bottom lip that she’s always biting and slipping out her tongue to lick across. It’s obscene, what she does with that mouth, and it’s even worse with a mouthguard in. Jonny watches her on the bench and squirms.

Tricia scores a lot, too, beautiful goals, and cellies are absolutely not something that should turn Jonny on but they do.

She’s obnoxious. She’s obnoxious and Jonny keeps wanting to poke at her, and to lean into it when Tricia pokes back. “You’re the worst,” Jonny says when Tricia steals the remote from her one night via the most underhanded wrestling cheat Jonny’s ever seen, and Jonny wants to kiss the self-satisfied smirk off her mouth.

It’s a problem. Jonny’s working on getting it under control, though. She at least makes an effort not to think about Tricia when she’s getting off. But then, in late November, she wakes up in the middle of the night because there’s a strange noise coming from the other side of the room.

It’s a squishing sound, like something wet is being moved around, over and over, almost like—oh. _Oh._

Jonny only just manages to be silent when she gasps. Her whole body goes hot, the heat concentrating itself between her legs, because Tricia’s over there—yeah. Tricia’s over there with her hand between her legs, getting herself off.

Jonny would give anything to be able to see. She bets Tricia’s face has gone slack, her mouth opening, and she would love to see her fingers sliding between her folds. But she has to settle for hearing it: the little bitten-off breaths, the slick noises that tell her how wet Tricia is. How turned on she is, how close to the edge.

It’s so hard not to reach down and touch herself. Jonny’s so wet. But Tricia would definitely be able to hear that. Jonny presses her thighs together tight and feels her pulse throb in her clit.

In the other bed, Tricia speeds up. She must be feeling so good now, warm and open and charged up. There’s a gasp that has a little bit of sound on the edge of it, and Jonny has to bite her lip to keep from mirroring it. She wants to be on that other bed: kissing Tricia as she comes, feeling her tremble under her. Sliding her mouth downward to suck on her clit until she shouts.

Tricia comes with a gasp, and then a jostling of the bed that Jonny knows is her hips driving up into her hand. Jonny squeezes her eyes shut and presses the heel of her hand to the wet patch on her underpants and waits for the heat to subside.

***

She doesn’t hear Tricia jerking off again. She thinks maybe it’s because Tricia hooks up so often—she doesn’t need to get herself off a lot. But she figures out a week or so later that that can't quite be the case.

They’re in Nashville, and they both go out after the game with some of the team. Tricia’s been talking with some guy in the corner for half an hour or so when Jonny decides to call it a night—she’s pretty wiped from the game, and she’s trying to be better about the Tricia thing, but it doesn’t mean she loves watching her flirt with some meathead in a snapback. Plus, if Tricia hooks up, it means at least a few hours alone in the hotel room. Getting herself off in an empty hotel room is always better than trying to do it in the shower.

Sometimes when Tricia’s out Jonny takes a while to work herself up to it, finds some good girl-on-girl porn and takes the scenic route. Tonight she just feels like getting off, though, so she does it fast, and it’s a good thing she does, since Tricia waltzes through the door not ten minutes later.

“Hey.” Jonny sits up a little guiltily, even though she already cleaned up and there’s nothing incriminating around. “What are you doing back so soon?”

“Eh, wasn’t really feeling it.” Tricia collapses on her bed. “Sometimes it’s a lot of work, you know?”

Jonny does know, but the work for her is usually the sex part. Presumably that’s the part Tricia enjoys. “Didn’t look like you were having to work too hard for it.”

“I mean, obviously I’m awesome at it,” Tricia says. “But, like, sometimes it doesn’t feel worth it, you know? And it’s not like I’m gonna get off from it, so.”

“Right,” Jonny says. Then, “Wait, what?”

Tricia waves her hand. “I mean, I know sex isn’t about getting off, but—”

“Hang on.” Jonny sits up, heart beating a little too hard. “What do you mean, it’s not about getting off?”

“Well, women never get off during sex,” Tricia says, like it’s obvious. Like that’s an undisputed fact.

Jonny spends a moment doubting everything she’s ever thought about heterosexuality. But—no. There’s no way. “That is patently untrue,” she says.

“Please,” Tricia scoffs. “Like you’ve gotten off with people during sex.”

“Yeah,” Jonny says. “I have.”

Tricia narrows her eyes. “Seriously. Like, _they_ got you off. Not like you just got yourself off while they were there.”

“Yeah,” Jonny repeats. Only once, with Natalie, but still. That was real.

Tricia looks at her, eyes still narrowed, obviously uncertain. Then: “No way.”

Jonny raises her eyebrows. “Really? You think I’m lying here?”

“I think you are so full of it,” Tricia says. “I think maybe you’ve never gotten off at all. I think you don’t even know what it feels like.”

Jonny laughs. Her stomach is still hot from the orgasm she had ten minutes before Tricia walked through the door. “I definitely know what it feels like.”

“Then you’re just making shit up,” Tricia says, and Jonny knows it’s a character failing that she can’t let a challenge go, but what she says is, “Fine, I’ll prove it.”

Tricia’s eyebrows go up. “Um, what?”

“I’ll prove it.” Jonny’s feeling reckless; the hot glow in her stomach is urging her on. She gets up from her bed. “Unless you don’t want me to? Afraid of being proven wrong?”

“How are you even going to…” Tricia starts to say, and then Jonny sits down on her bed and puts a hand on her thigh, and Tricia's eyes widen. “Jonny.”

“What, you don’t think I can do it? Want to make this interesting?” Jonny asks, and she sees the moment the challenge firms up in Tricia’s face. There’s a reason they both play a competitive sport at the professional level.

“Yeah, okay, bring it,” Tricia says. “You fail, and I get to do your makeup. Five days.”

Jonny’s going to look so ridiculous if Tricia gets her hands on her makeup. “Deal,” she says. The blood is singing in her head. “Take off your shirt.”

“Pretty sure you’re not getting me off via my chest,” Tricia says.

“Pretty sure you have no idea how people get each other off,” Jonny says, and Tricia sticks her tongue out and strips her shirt over her head. The tongue sticking out should make her less attractive, but somehow it sends a zing through Jonny. It’s so Tricia. Fuck. It’s _Tricia,_ what the fuck is Jonny even—

Tricia’s sitting there in her bra, swells of her breasts visible over the lace-edged cups, and Jonny doesn’t have to look away this time. Her hands are shaking. “Bra, too.”

Tricia rolls her eyes. “I really don’t think you know what you’re doing here,” she says, but she unhooks her bra, and then her breasts are spilling out of the cups. NHL players tend not to be very well-endowed—they have to keep their body fat too low for that—but Tricia has generous C-cups, soft against the hard muscle of her torso, and Jonny wants.

This can’t be about what Jonny wants. It definitely can’t be about the number of times she’s wanted to stare at these breasts over Tricia’s low-cut tank tops. This is about getting Tricia off.

Jonny runs her tongue nervously over her bottom lip. “Lie down,” she says.

Tricia does, stretching a little against the sheet. “So, how are you gonna wow me with—oh,” she says, cutting off as Jonny leans forward and brushes her fingers against the swells of her breasts. Not her nipples yet: just the smooth skin underneath, where it’s so soft to the touch it feels like it can’t quite be real. Jonny’s touched this area on herself but never on anyone else—not even on Natalie, really, not slowing down enough to take it in.

She can’t look at Tricia’s face. She watches her chest instead: the movement of Tricia’s breathing, the gentle sweeps of her own fingers as they explore the softness of Tricia’s breasts.

Tricia’s breathing is light but steady, still. “Jonny,” she says, an edge of boredom in her tone, and then, “Oh!” as Jonny’s fingers brush across her nipples. They’re half-swollen already, and as Jonny does another light pass, they tighten up to hard peaks.

That’s good. Jonny has to get her turned on; she doesn’t want to dive into the serious stuff before Tricia’s feeling it. And there’s not much hope that Jonny’s presence alone is going to do much for her. But the body—the body has nerve endings, and Jonny’s willing to bet that no guy has ever spent the time to work on Tricia’s breasts with an eye to what actually feels good to her.

Tricia’s breathing a little faster now, her chest jumping whenever Jonny teases a nipple with a fingernail. It feels kind of amazing, the movement of her breath under Jonny’s hands. Jonny’s trying to stick to what will get Tricia off rather than what she herself wants here, but she’s pretty sure the next thing will serve both purposes.

She lowers her mouth to lick at a nipple.

Tricia jolts at the touch. “Fuck, this is so weird,” she says, but her voice is breathless. Her chest is moving faster under Jonny’s mouth.

Jonny works over Tricia’s nipple like that for a while, keeping her tongue light, because that’s what seems to make Tricia push into her touch the most. There’s no sound except for the harshness of their breath and the little catches in Tricia’s throat when Jonny does something really good. Jonny puts a hand on Tricia’s stomach and feathers her fingers there while she licks, half to work Tricia up more, and half because she wants to feel Tricia’s stomach muscles jerk. Tricia swears when Jonny scrapes her teeth over a nipple, and Jonny feels something clench deep inside herself.

“I thought,” Tricia says, and then gasps for a gratifying moment as Jonny scrapes with her teeth again. “Thought you were going to get me off.”

Jonny doesn’t answer—just slides her hand lower, till her fingers brush the waistband of Tricia’s pants, and feels Tricia go still under her. Then she fastens her mouth around a nipple and sucks.

“Oh, fuck,” Tricia says, arching into her mouth. Jonny teases her other nipple with a fingernail while she sucks, and—and she can’t possibly suck hard enough to satisfy the hunger in her gut. She wants everything, wants it now.

Tricia’s really breathing hard now. Her breaths are winding something inside Jonny’s stomach: tighter, tighter, tighter. “Come on, come _on_ ,” Tricia says, and that’s what Jonny’s been waiting for.

Tricia’s pants are these stretchy contraptions of witchcraft that turn her ass into something Jonny can never look away from, and there’s just enough give for Jonny’s hand to slide into her panties. “Oh,” Tricia says, high-pitched, as Jonny’s middle finger slips between her folds.

Jonny’s glad her face is hidden in Tricia’s chest, because she can’t quite suppress the shudder of arousal that goes through her. Tricia’s wet: much wetter than Jonny would have expected after just a little teasing. She—she must have really sensitive nipples. Jonny could probably get her off like this, if she wanted to, and the thought sends a wave of heat through her and makes her bite down on a nipple so that Tricia yelps.

Jonny doesn’t want to finish it this way. She wants other stuff.

She gives a last suck to Tricia’s nipple, and then she raises her head. She doesn’t totally mean to make eye contact with Tricia, but their eyes meet anyway: Tricia’s pupils blown wide and black. Her cheeks are flushed, her teeth sunk into her bright pink lower lip.

“This is so weird,” Tricia says again, holding Jonny’s eyes.

Jonny’s finger is still between Tricia’s folds. “We don’t have to—”

“Fuck you, it’s a bet,” Tricia says, fire returning to her face, and Jonny wants to kiss her.

The desire rattles her, foreign and familiar at the same time. Jonny always wants to kiss her. Has never wanted it while touching her like this, though. “Fine, then I’m taking off your pants,” she says, hoping her voice sounds steady.

Tricia helps a little, raising her hips, and then she’s lying there in nothing but pink lace-edge panties. There’s a damp spot at the crotch. Jonny can barely swallow for how wet her mouth is.

“So, um, are you going to…” Tricia says, and Jonny pulls down her panties.

She has tidily trimmed blond curls. Jonny smooths her hands over the cut of her hipbones, and then moves down to part her folds.

Tricia’s breathing really fast. She’s tense—Jonny’s lying between her legs, and she can feel it in Tricia’s leg muscles. Jonny’s abruptly nervous. It’s been so long since she’s done this. And Tricia isn’t actually gay; what if that means Jonny can’t get her off? A mouth is a mouth, but Jonny knows from kissing guys that the person you’re with makes it feel different. Jonny could try to eat her out and end up being the person with her face in her roommate’s cunt licking away to no effect until said roommate awkwardly tells her to stop and no one can make eye contact the next morning.

Or she could be the person who gets Tricia off.

Jonny didn't get where she is in professional hockey by passing up the hard stuff. “Anyone ever do this for you?” she asks.

“No one fucking does this,” Tricia says, managing to inject attitude into it, even though Jonny can see how flushed her face and chest are.

“Sure they do,” Jonny says, heart beating hard in her throat, and bends down and licks between her folds.

She almost makes a noise at her first taste of it—barely holds back, but has to, because she can’t let Tricia know how into this she is. The taste bursts across her tongue, bitter, different from Natalie, so welcome.

“Fucking Christ, Jonny,” Tricia says, and Jonny takes that as an invitation to lick in again.

Jonny maybe goes a little overboard. It’s so good, having Tricia’s hot soft pussy under her mouth, hearing the little ways her breath catches as Jonny licks into different parts of it. When Jonny finally stops exploring and focuses on her clit, Tricia’s gasps start having sound behind them, little whines, and she’s rocking her hips up against Jonny’s mouth.

“What the fuck, Jonny, how is this even,” Tricia says, her words not quite distinct, and Jonny closes her eyes against how overwhelming this is. She can practically feel the arousal running through Tricia’s body in the trembling of her thighs and jerking of her stomach; can feel it in her own body, an answering thrumming in her veins. She wants to stick a hand down her own pants so badly, but that’s not what this is supposed to be. She keeps working on Tricia, her own cunt aching as Tricia’s slick fills her mouth and coats her chin.

Tricia’s breath is devolving into sobs. “Oh my God—fuck—I’m gonna—” Her hips grind up against Jonny’s mouth, and Jonny sucks on her clit and flicks her tongue fast against it. Her own body is on fire at the sounds, the taste, the feel of Tricia, shaking beneath her—

She can feel the moment Tricia flips over. She feels it like a tiny explosion inside her own belly: the knowledge that it’s happening, that Tricia’s tumbling over the edge. That Jonny brought her there. She sucks harder and wrings as many sounds out of her as she can as Tricia bucks beneath her mouth.

Tricia finally collapses against the sheets. Jonny takes her mouth off her and hangs her head for a minute, panting, before she rocks back on her heels. “Told you so,” she says roughly, through a mouth that’s wet with arousal and sharp with Tricia’s scent.

Tricia just blinks dazedly at her, sprawled against the pillows. “Wow,” she says. “That was…whoa.”

Jonny shifts uncomfortably. She doesn’t think she’s ever been this turned on without actually touching herself. She can still see Tricia’s pussy, wet and spread and pink. “I’m just gonna—brush my teeth,” she says, getting up.

As soon as the bathroom door is shut, she has a hand down her panties, fingers sliding through the slick that’s practically dripping out of her, and she rubs one out in, like, two minutes flat to the thought of Tricia arching up against her mouth and shouting.

When she’s done, she leans against the door. She actually doesn’t want to brush her teeth; she’d rather keep Tricia’s taste in her mouth for a little bit, gross as that probably is. But that’s what she told Tricia she was doing, so she does.

When she comes out, Tricia hasn’t moved, though she has closed her eyes. Jonny sits down on her own bed. “I guess you don’t get to do my makeup now,” she says.

“Urgh,” Tricia says, or something equally inarticulate.

They didn’t set terms for what Jonny would get if she won. That’s only just occurring to Jonny now. She…well, she didn’t need any incentive to do what she just did. Fuck, she hopes Tricia doesn’t notice that.

Tricia doesn’t seem like she’s noticing a lot right now. Jonny should feel good about that, probably—she’s reduced Tricia to a sprawling mess. But she feels oddly cold, or small, maybe. Disconnected.

She slides between her sheets. What just happened, it was—well. It was what it was, and it’s over now. Now Jonny just has to live with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone technically consents to the sex that happens in this chapter, but Tricia's goaded into it as part of a bet -- not exactly a textbook case of enthusiastic consent. It's not troubling for anyone in the story and not something I find personally troubling in this (fictional) context, but ymmv!


	4. Chapter 4

Things aren’t really weird the next morning, if only because they have to get up insanely early to head to the airport. Jonny definitely feels weird about it, though. Tricia’s hard to look at: every time Jonny does, she feels shaky deep down at the core of her, rocked with the sense memory of Tricia moving under her mouth.

It’s…not the most comfortable plane ride Jonny’s ever been on.

It’s December, and the Hawks are doing a bunch of holiday media stuff. Jonny and Tricia get asked to do more of it than anyone else, which Jonny is starting to expect. She’s glad she and Tricia are playing well enough to merit the face-of-the-franchise roles they’re being shoved into, but she’s less glad of it when she’s sitting in a makeup chair having pom-poms arranged on her head.

“I’m just not sure the colors are right,” the makeup woman says, tugging on the pom-poms that dangle from Jonny’s headband. “Do you think she would look better in blue?”

“I think it’s a makeup problem. Let’s rethink her lipstick,” the other woman says, and Jonny wants to scream.

They end up sticking with the red pom-poms, because they match Jonny’s jersey. Her jersey, which is currently all she’s wearing over her underwear. Because a jersey and no pants is totally a normal holiday look in Chicago.

Jonny’s aware that she’s supposed to look sexy. That’s the whole point of this. She just doesn’t get how her bare legs sticking out of an oversized jersey is supposed to be in any way sexy. She’s pretty sure she’s just going to get goosebumps and look like something someone plucked and forgot to cook.

“Let’s try a pose like Tricia’s,” the photographer says, and Jonny looks across the locker room to where Tricia’s posed with her legs up on a bench, grinning at the camera.

Oh. So that’s why they think it’ll look sexy.

Jonny swallows against the sudden dryness in her mouth. Tricia’s wearing the same thing she is, but with reindeer antlers instead of the stupid pom-poms. Her hair tumbles down her back under the antlers, artfully styled and gelled for once, and her eyes are sparkling and her legs oh god her _legs._

Jonny’s never been much of a leg girl. Convenient, when you’re trying not to be turned on by a locker room full of women who are usually more impressive in the ass than the chest department. But Tricia’s legs, right in front of her—they’re long and smooth and white, and pale isn’t something Jonny usually thinks of as a good thing, but fuck if it isn’t doing it for her right now.

Tricia catches sight of her, and her dimples pop as she rolls her eyes. Jonny automatically smiles back and wonders if she looks as lost as she feels.

They end up leaning Jonny against the lockers, hockey stick end-up in her hand with a little Christmas bow on the blade. She can’t imagine this looks anything other than extremely dumb.

Tricia’s still arranged on the bench in front of her, back arched to show off her breasts. “Let’s go for something a little more casual, Tricia,” the shoot director says. “Can you lean your head on your knees, looking at me sideways?”

“Like this?” Tricia leans forward. Her curls tumble down against her legs, little golden gleams against shadowed skin. Jonny had her hands on that skin, just a few days ago. Her hands slid along those thighs while Tricia’s clit jumped under her tongue.

“Jonny,” the director says, and Jonny looks up, hurriedly swallowing the saliva that was pooling in her mouth. Was she being too obvious—did they see—

“Give us a smile, would you?” the director says. “Something sultry. Picture…how about…a hot guy you’d like to kiss, walking towards you out of the snow.”

Jonny gives a forced laugh. “Like this?” she asks.

“There you go,” the director says, and the cameras start clicking, taking pictures of Jonny like she’s the perfect model of an NHL player, and not at all like she’s dying to get down on her knees and eat her teammate out again in the middle of the locker room.

***

The Christmas season means many things, and one of them is the Blackhawks’ annual holiday party.

It’s an important tradition, the PR person tells them at a team meeting in mid-December. There’ll be a lot of press presence, which means that they should treat this as a professional event rather than a social one—so not much drinking, the PR guy says with a pointed look at all of them. Also, as he manages to convey without saying it in so many words, it would be a very bad idea for them to show up without a date.

Jonny assumes that it isn’t a problem for most of the team. Most of them have boyfriends, if not husbands, and even the ones like Tricia who are single probably have a stable of guys they’ve hooked up with in the city who they can call on to be a guest at a swanky party. Jonny’s only hooked up a couple of times this fall, and she didn’t get the guys’ numbers.

She thinks about picking someone up now. But this party is obviously important. She can’t risk showing up with someone she only knows from one night of awkward fucking. And anything more than that—anything like dating—

Yeah, no. Bad enough when she has to let a guy fuck her for a single night.

The party is coming up fast, though, and when it’s only a week away and she still hasn’t thought of anything, she bites the bullet and goes for the emergency option.

“Hey, Sharpy,” she says when they’re on their way out of the locker room after practice.

Sharpy turns around, perfect shampoo-commercial hair falling back over her shoulder. “You called?”

Jonny does not look at the ground by her feet. She’s an adult, goddammit, and a professional hockey player. “Would you…be willing to set me up with someone for the party next week?” she asks through a jaw that’s only a little tight.

Sharpy’s smile stretches wide. “Toes. I thought you would never ask.”

It turns out Sharpy has a list on her phone entitled _Guys to set Jonny up with._ “I thought you thought I’d never ask,” Jonny says.

“I lied,” Sharpy says. “Let’s see…Chad, eh, kind of sweaty…Daniel, too short…no, Brock should really go on the other list.”

“What other list?” Jonny asks.

Sharpy’s smile turns scarier than before. “Do you really want to know?”

Jonny does not.

Sharpy ends up setting her up with this guy named Greg who works in consulting. “Yeah, I know Andy from college,” he tells Jonny when he picks her up on the night of the party. “Him and me and Trish go way back.”

It’s weird to hear Sharpy called Trish. “That sounds fun,” Jonny says politely, and pretends not to notice the way Greg’s eyes are darting down to her neckline. It’s not like she can’t empathize, but still.

Jonny picked out her dress with Tricia’s help on a nightmarish shopping trip last Wednesday. Tricia made her try on what felt like every dress in Saks, and then pronounced her, horrifyingly, “babe-a-licious” in the long red one she ended up buying.

Jonny doesn’t feel babe-a-licious. She feels like she’s been stuffed into a tube sock. And no one as tall as her should wear heels, ever.

“You’re just saying that because you know you can’t walk in them,” Sharpy says when she and Andy find Jonny and Greg at the party.

“Of course I can walk in them,” Jonny says. She’s a professional athlete.

Sharpy smirks. “Okay, but you’re leading in our pool.”

“Your pool?”

“Oh good, are you telling her about the pool?” Andy says, tuning into their conversation.

“We have pools on everything,” Sharpy says. “Person most likely to swear in front of a TV camera. Person most likely to get disastrously drunk. Person most likely to strategically hang out under the mistletoe.”

“Person most likely to overestimate their capability in heels,” Andy says, and usually Jonny likes him a lot, but right now she can see why he’s with Sharpy.

“I hope you have Kaner down for the drinking one,” Jonny says, rather than any commentary on her walking prowess.

“Hm, I think we were giving Burish the returning advantage,” Andy says. “But what do you think, babe, should we switch it?”

“Speak of the devil,” Sharpy says, looking past Andy. “Look who just showed up under the mistletoe.”

Jonny looks. The mistletoe is placed over a door on the far side of the room, and coming through it is a very tall bro-y-looking guy. On his arm is a girl, a girl in this floaty blue dress that—

Oh God. It’s Tricia.

Jonny stares as Tricia comes into the room. Tricia looks good most of the time, even when she’s sweaty and just out of her gear, but right now, fuck, that dress. It swirls around her legs, light and shimmery, and it makes her skin look like—it makes her face look like—

Jonny realizes she’s clutching really hard at Greg’s arm. She’s gonna blame it on the heels.

“Damn,” Sharpy says. “Kid finally learned how to do her makeup.”

Jonny doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t trust herself to speak.

She doesn’t say hi to Tricia at first. It’s not that Jonny’s avoiding her; it’s just that she’s hyperaware of where Tricia is, every second, and it’s impossible to go near her without feeling like she’s doing it deliberately. But Tricia finds her eventually, over by the tree where they’re all supposed to take cards to buy gifts for low-income kids and stuff.

“A baby, three months?” Tricia screws up her face at the card Jonny’s flipping over. “Ugh, I’d have no idea what to do with that.”

Jonny laughs, sounding kind of choked to her own ears. Tricia is…wow. The dress is even better close up. “Don’t you have like three younger sisters?”

“Yeah, but I like babies better when my parents are there to take care of them.”

“Better not let your date hear you say that,” Jonny says. She doesn’t know what made her mention him; she wasn’t planning to. But Tricia has shiny lip gloss on and Jonny can’t think.

Tricia’s face lights up at the mention of her date. “He’s cute, right? I met him at Starbucks last week.”

For the life of her, Jonny doesn’t know how Tricia manages to pick up dates at these weird places. Jonny can barely talk to the strangers who come up to her to ask for autographs. “Yeah, I guess he’s all right,” Jonny says, which is better than mentioning that she’d like to stab him in the eyeballs with her heels for showing up with Tricia on his arm.

Tricia leans closer, filling Jonny’s nose with whatever fruity shampoo she used to get her hair to be all shiny like that. “I’m gonna go home with him tonight,” she says. “Try out that stuff you showed me.”

Jonny goes hot, all over. “Um, good,” she manages to say.

“I hope so,” Tricia says, low and kind of giggly, and Jonny—

“Hey, they were out of that kind you liked,” Greg says, appearing at her elbow with a glass of champagne. “But I got you this Québécois kind. You’re from there, right?”

“They make Canadian champagne?” Tricia asks.

“Thanks,” Jonny says to Greg, tearing her eyes away from where Tricia’s nose is scrunching up. “Um, you’ve met Greg, right?”

“Okay, you’ve gotta tell me,” Tricia says, looking up at Greg. “Is it maple-flavored?”

Jonny doesn’t even know what’s wrong with her that this is her taste.

“Um, I don’t think so,” Greg says. He sounds politely confused. “It said it was made with grapes from the Québécois region of—”

“Yeah, okay, so not sticking around for Canadian champagne facts,” Tricia says. “Wish me luck tonight,” she says to Jonny, dropping a wink before she swirls away in a cloud of blue.

“That was…strange,” Greg says as she goes.

Jonny tips the glass of champagne back and drains half of it. It’s terrible.

***

There’s a three-piece band playing jazzy versions of Christmas songs, and Jonny lets herself be led onto the floor a while later. Greg’s a decent lead, doesn’t step on her feet and even keeps her up when she stumbles over her shoes (shut up, Sharpy), but Jonny keeps looking over his shoulder at where Tricia’s dancing with Tall Dark and Bro-y.

Andy should probably have put his money on Tricia in the drinking pool, because she does seem to be pretty far gone. Or maybe she’s just being silly: it’s hard to tell sometimes with Tricia. She’s leaning into her date and doing some kind of stupid dance that involves shimmying her shoulders, her hair falling into her face and her cheeks pink from the dancing, and Jonny can imagine what it would feel like to have that smile aimed at her.

She wasn’t kidding herself about their thing a few weeks ago being a one-off. And she wasn’t kidding herself about what her life would be like if she made it to the NHL. This—whatever nonsense she feels when Tricia tips her head back and laughs—is just something she has to put up with.

“I had a really nice time,” Greg says when the party’s winding down for the evening. “Would you be up for doing it again sometime?”

He’s a perfectly nice guy, and he’s Andy and Sharpy’s friend—not someone she can just blow off for no reason. And he isn’t trying to get her to come home with him tonight, which gives him major points. Ten feet away, Tricia’s laughing into her date’s shoulder. “Sure,” Jonny says, and he smiles and takes her arm to lead her to the car.

Half an hour later, she’s spread out on her bed, pressing desperately on her clit as she imagines Tricia falling apart under someone else’s mouth.

***

It’s a dumb thing to think about. But Jonny still wonders, when she sees Tricia the next afternoon for practice. Did Tall Bro Dude go down on her last night? Did Tricia make the same sounds she did when Jonny did it?

Tricia looks—happy, normal. The same way she’s looked for the past few weeks, and the weeks before that. Jonny has no clue, except for that one whispered exchange last night, what Tricia’s been thinking about it, or if she’s even been thinking about it at all.

“So, Greg, huh?” Sharpy says with a sly look, and Jonny snaps her gaze away from Tricia’s upper thighs.

“Um, yeah, he seems…good,” Jonny says.

“Wow, drown me with your enthusiasm already,” Sharpy says.

“No, I mean—” But Jonny doesn’t really mean any more than she said, and that’s the problem.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Sharpy says, slinging an arm around her shoulder and ruffling her sleeve a little. “Just don’t let this one go, okay? He’s good people.”

“Sure,” Jonny says, just like she did last night, and means it about as much.

She does go out with Greg again a few days after Christmas. They get lunch near his office, and he tells Jonny about his family Christmas celebrations and she tells him about their win against Nashville a few days earlier. He doesn’t seem super interested—his and Sharpy’s friendship doesn’t seem to be based on a shared love of hockey—but he lets her talk about it and asks some questions, which is a decent minimum qualification for someone Jonny could date.

Her favorite thing about the date is that it’s at lunchtime, so there’s no question of them going home together afterward.

The team goes on the road shortly afterward, and Jonny’s a little relieved about it. If she has other reasons, Tricia-shaped reasons, for wanting to be on the road, she’s not thinking about those.

They fly out on New Year’s Eve, so some of the team is mad about not being able to go out in Chicago. “Cheer up, assholes, it’s Los Angeles,” Sharpy says. “We can make our own fun. You’re in, right, Peeks?”

Tricia is of course in. Jonny tries to beg off and go back to the room, but Tricia makes this really betrayed face and Sharpy spouts some BS about team bonding and Duncs and Seabs admit that she has a point, and so Jonny ends up in a night club in L.A.

It’s actually not bad for a while. The club is loud and dark enough that Jonny doesn’t feel like anyone’s paying attention to her. She’s not safe enough that she could actually go join the girls who are grinding together on the dance floor, but she’s safe enough that she can stand by the wall and look at them sometimes without anyone noticing.

Sharpy does make an effort to keep the team together, though, so Jonny gets a nice eyeful of Tricia making out sloppily with this dude with spiked hair. It’s…way more tongue than she ever wanted to see, in this context. “Ah, New Year’s,” Sharpy says, looking at them and pretending to wipe away a tear.

Burish’s hand claps down on Jonny’s back. “So, Toes, gonna find someone to kiss at midnight?”

Jonny squirms out from under her hand. “I don’t know, what about you guys?”

“Can’t cheat on the mister,” Sharpy says. “You, though…”

She starts scanning the crowd, and Jonny panics. “Actually, I think I’m gonna go back to the room,” she says. “Gotta be in good shape for the game tomorrow.”

Sharpy starts to make a face, probably because it’s like nine o’clock, but Seabs speaks up unexpectedly. “I’ll go with you. I promised Dan I’d call him at midnight Chicago time.”

It’s way easier for Jonny to get away with Seabs beside her, and it’s blessedly quiet as they wait for a cab. “How you doing under the pressure?” Seabs asks once they’re en route, and for a second Jonny thinks she knows about all the shit with Tricia. But no: she means the season, obviously.

“It’s okay,” Jonny says. “We’ve been playing pretty well lately, right?”

“Damn straight we have,” Seabs says, and that turns the conversation nicely away from any personal problems Jonny might have.

Jonny doesn’t expect to see Tricia till after midnight. But Tricia comes through the door around eleven-thirty, when Jonny’s trying valiantly to stay awake to adjust to the time difference. Tricia’s hair is damp and her face is shiny clean and she walks up to Jonny’s bed and says, “You need to get me off, right now.”

Jonny fumbles the book she’s reading. “What?”

“That guy,” Tricia says, stripping her shirt over her head, “was awful. He couldn’t eat me out for shit.”

Tricia’s wearing this lacy bra that hugs the curves of her breasts. Jonny needs to stop staring. 

“Um.” Jonny clears her throat against the roughness in her voice. “You just, he was just…”

Tricia rolls her eyes. “I showered after, Jesus,” she says, like that’s what’s on Jonny’s mind. “But he wanted to join me, so I couldn’t even get myself off properly in there.”

“Right,” Jonny says. Her eyes keep going to Tricia’s crotch. She’s not sure there’s any blood left in her head.

“Jonny.” Tricia puts on her most pathetic voice and sticks her lip out in a pout. “You’ve gotta help me. I’m dying here.”

Jonny probably shouldn’t. It would be dumb, to do this again when it messed with her head so badly last time. But, well, the damage is already done, and Tricia’s asking, and, and—well, obviously she’s going to do it. “Yeah, okay, lie down,” she says.

Tricia heaves a huge sigh. “Thank fuck,” she says, and undoes her bra. She pulls off her miniskirt and panties, too, and is naked, just like that, in the time it takes Jonny to blink. “I was going crazy on the way back here,” she says, lying down on the sheets and wriggling a little to get comfortable.

Jonny thinks about Tricia in a cab, turned on and thinking about Jonny doing this to her, and it socks her in the gut with heat. “Yeah,” she says nonsensically, and gets on the bed next to Tricia. She puts her hand on Tricia’s thigh first—automatic, to reach out and touch the skin she was looking at so hard at the photoshoot. Tricia shivers a little as Jonny trails her fingers up to her stomach, over skin that manages to be extra-soft despite the abs not far beneath the surface. Jonny digs her fingers in a little and leans down to suck a nipple into her mouth.

“Finally,” Tricia says, a sigh in her voice, and Jonny’s stomach flips over. She sucks and licks over the tight little nub of Tricia’s nipple and wishes she could be licking into her mouth—wants to taste the tongue that was so enthusiastically tangling with that guy’s at the club. But that would probably be beyond the bounds of what they’re doing here. Instead she switches nipples and listens to Tricia’s little sighs of pleasure and moves her hand lower to scratch at Tricia’s pubic hair.

Tricia shifts under the touch. “Jonny, come on,” she says. “I’m already, like—I don’t need you to, like, work me up or anything here.”

Jonny makes a sound against her nipple. She’s breathing so hard already—they both are. “Yeah, um, okay,” she says, swallowing, and she pushes herself up and slides down the bed before she can do anything dumb like kiss the thready sound out of Tricia’s voice.

Tricia’s legs widen for her. Jonny kisses the outside of her folds first, the prickly hair tickling her lips, and then slips her tongue inside. Tricia’s so wet—she wasn’t kidding about being ready—and Jonny makes an involuntary sound in her throat and licks in deeper.

Tricia makes this happy noise and spreads her legs further. “Yeah,” she says. “Fuck, that guy was so incompetent. I swear, he couldn’t even find my—Jonny!” she yelps, just as Jonny licks over her clit.

“Sh,” Jonny says, because the teammates on either side of them might be back from the club. She licks across Tricia’s clit again, and Tricia makes muffled sounds into her own hand.

Tricia’s cunt is wet and soft and so hot under Jonny’s mouth. Jonny explores for a while because she can’t help savoring it, but she’s hungry for the sounds Tricia makes when she hits her clit. Soon enough she’s licking and sucking the swollen bud while Tricia grips the sheets and gasps.

“Fuck,” Tricia says. “I thought maybe I was—ah—imagining it last time, but this is so—fuck, Jonny, Jonny,” she says, getting dangerously loud when Jonny slips two fingers inside of her.

“Sh,” Jonny says. “You have to…” But she gets why Tricia’s loud, feels the same desperation spiraling through her. She digs her fingers into Tricia’s G-spot and shivers at the movement of Tricia’s walls around her. She gets her tongue back on Tricia’s clit, and Tricia starts making high-pitched sounds interspersed with Jonny’s name, muffled by the fingers she’s shoved in her mouth.

Hearing her name come out of Tricia’s mouth does funny things to Jonny’s insides. It makes her fuck her fingers harder into Tricia’s body and flick her tongue faster against her clit; makes her clench her own cunt in rhythm with Tricia clenching hers, tight and loose, tight and loose around Jonny’s fingers as she rocks up.

“I’m gonna—Jonny, I’m gonna—oh!” Tricia cries out, loud enough to obscure the whimpering sound Jonny lets out as she fucks Tricia till she comes. It’s almost as good as coming herself. Hell, she might even choose this, if she had the choice: giving, rather than receiving. The chance to feel Tricia fall apart like this under her mouth. The sensations it sparks under her own skin.

She rests her forehead against Tricia’s thigh for a moment, and then she gets up and sits on the end of the bed, her back to Tricia. Would it be weird if she went into the bathroom right away again? She kind of needs to: can’t imagine living with this urgent arousal for much longer without getting off. This must have been how Tricia felt having sex with the guy, she thinks, and the thought sends another wave of heat through her. Fuck. She’s going to have to—

“What are you doing?” Tricia asks. “Get back here.”

It takes Jonny a second to parse the words. “Huh?”

“I’m not, like, a jerk.” Tricia huffs a little. She sits up, curls tumbling over the curves of her breasts. “I’m not gonna leave you hanging like that guy did to me.”

What—oh. “What?” Jonny says, but she’s already moving, automatically, up the bed.

Tricia rolls her eyes. “Get your clothes off first, jeez,” she says, and Jonny fumbles as she pulls her t-shirt over her head.

This can’t actually be happening. Jonny has to have misunderstood. But Tricia makes an impatient gesture when Jonny doesn’t move to take her sweatpants off, so Jonny does, stripping off underwear that’s already embarrassingly slick, and when she lies down on the bed, still moving slowly in case she’s got it wrong, Tricia gets in between her legs.

“This can’t be that hard,” Tricia announces. “I mean, if you did it,” she adds, and Jonny chokes back a noise.

Tricia’s mouth. Jonny’s stared at it so much, these past few months. Tricia’s always doing something with it: talking or laughing or chewing on her lips. And her tongue—fuck, she’s always flicking out her tongue to wet her lips. She does it now, six inches from Jonny’s cunt, and Jonny’s pulse jumps.

This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. Except it is, because Tricia leans down and licks between her folds.

Jonny jerks her hips up like she’s been shocked. That feeling—Tricia’s tongue--

Tricia pulls back a little and makes a face. “It tastes funny,” she says.

Jonny’s trying not to hyperventilate. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, you can—”

“I will, keep your pants on. Or, you know,” Tricia says, and licks in again. This time she hits Jonny’s clit at the end of her stroke. The feeling rockets around Jonny’s body, and it’s all she can do not to rock up obnoxiously into Tricia’s mouth. “Fuck, yes,” she says. “Just like…”

Tricia dives in again, exploring Jonny’s cunt the way she does her mouthguard: thorough, probing, getting her lips and tongue and teeth all involved like she wants to eat everything up.

It’s blindingly good. Jonny was already soaking wet when she started, and now Tricia’s tongue is poking into her hole. Tricia’s tongue is licking at her folds, teasing into every little crevice; Tricia’s mouth is fastening around Jonny’s clit, sucking—

“Glargh,” Jonny says, abs clenching and thighs trembling with the effort not to fuck up too hard into Tricia’s mouth. That high-voltage feeling is rolling through her stomach now, ramping up with every flick of Tricia’s tongue on her clit, and she’s not even breathing anymore so much as sobbing.

Nothing has ever felt as good as this. Not her own hands, not Natalie—not even licking into Tricia’s cunt, feeling her juices spill onto her tongue—nothing compares to what Tricia’s doing to her now, shooting right into the core of her, white-hot and unending and—

“Mm,” Tricia says, humming into Jonny’s clit, and Jonny loses it, her control snapping as her hips rock up desperately into Tricia’s mouth. Tricia goes with it—must go with it, because her mouth is still there, the only thing Jonny can feel until she falls back, boneless, against the sheets.

“Oh wow, that worked,” Tricia says, and Jonny can’t respond. Can’t even move.

“Cool,” Tricia says, getting up and bouncing over to her own bed.

Jonny…may never move again.

She does get up eventually—goes into the bathroom and brushes her teeth after Tricia’s breathing evenly in the next bed. She stands in the bathroom doorway after and looks at Tricia’s sleeping body and tries to believe that that just happened. It seems completely impossible. But her muscles are still quivering with the force of her orgasm, which means…

Jonny has no idea what it means. She has no idea about anything, at the moment.

She catches sight of the clock as she gets into bed. Twelve-fifteen. It’s the start of a new year.


	5. Chapter 5

Jonny doesn’t expect Tricia to bring it up. She didn’t last time. But they’re in their room the next day, getting ready for their pre-game nap, and Tricia says, “That was so good, last night.”

Jonny freezes a little where she’s digging clothes out of her suitcase. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, we should, like, give guys lessons, or something,” Tricia says, arching her back in preparation for lying down, and Jonny looks away.

She doesn’t want to give guys lessons. She wants to do it to Tricia again, lick over her breasts and make her tremble and let out those urgent little sounds. But she can’t say that, and she can’t count on it happening again.

Three days later, though, they’re in another club after losing in Anaheim, and Tricia sticks near Jonny while they’re out. Jonny thinks it’s because she’s bummed—they’re all bummed, after losing three in a row on this road trip. But when they get back to their hotel room, Tricia crowds close to Jonny and plucks at her shirt and says, “Come on, let’s do the thing.”

Tricia gets Jonny’s shirt halfway up before Jonny gets it together to pull it off, and then it doesn’t take long before the rest of their clothes are off. “You can go first,” Tricia says, pushing her down on the bed, and Jonny goes, still trying to catch up with what’s going on.

She catches up pretty fast once Tricia’s humming against her folds. Jonny’s already a little wet from Tricia standing next to her at the club all night and, you know, being Tricia, but she feels herself getting more revved up embarrassingly quickly.

“Fuck, don’t you believe in warm-up?” she gasps out, mostly to cover for it.

“Oh, huh,” Tricia says, raising her head. “Yeah, I guess I could do that. Like this?” She reaches a hand out and tweaks Jonny’s nipple.

Jonny arches up and swears as the sensation goes straight to her clit. “Yeah, like—no, come on,” she says, because Tricia’s moving up the bed now, getting her mouth on Jonny’s breast. It feels amazing, but it also makes her want pressure on her clit again, really badly. She wriggles a little, and then Tricia’s hand is there, sliding between her folds and pressing down just where she needs it.

_Just like she touches herself,_ Jonny thinks, and she moans at the sparks that go through her gut. Tricia’s hand and mouth are working together, mounting Jonny higher and higher until Jonny feels the frayed ends of her control breaking away and she chokes out, “Yeah, faster, I’m gonna—”

“Fuck, this is so easy,” Tricia observes, lips buzzing against Jonny’s nipple, and Jonny gasps and arches her back and comes just like that.

Tricia rolls over onto her back. “My turn,” she announces while Jonny’s catching her breath and riding out the last little tremors, and Jonny wants to roll over and capture her mouth and—

She doesn’t. That’s not what Tricia wants. Jonny slides down the bed instead, and Tricia rises into her touch right away, already wet and swollen hot.

She’s so responsive to this, every time. It gets to Jonny: gets her hot again, gets her squirming as the glow from her own orgasm ramps back up to arousal at the sound of Tricia’s gasps. Jonny buries her face in Tricia’s cunt and Tricia falls apart under her and Jonny feels it all through her own body.

She gets herself off again in the shower after. As she does it, she imagines Tricia pressing against her, lifting her mouth to be kissed.

***

Tricia still picks up guys. Jonny doesn’t expect her not to. They don’t talk about it—obviously; Jonny isn’t going to mess this up by doing something dumb like talking about it—and Jonny stands silently at their table in the bar while Tricia flirts with the probable football jock at the bar.

“Being a little mean to that glass, Toes,” Sharpy points out. “Blaming it for our loss against Dallas?”

“Nope,” Jonny says shortly. She loosens her grip so her fingers aren’t white anymore. “I blame that one on myself.”

It’s true, up to a point. She’s been playing like shit lately—they all have been, and the scores are reflecting it. Jonny feels it like a weight that gets heavier and heavier with each loss. Right now, watching Tricia flash her dimples at Football Dude, Jonny feels the two feelings mix together to make a leaden lump in her gut.

She has no right to be jealous. She has absolutely zero right to be jealous. Jonny repeats that to herself as she heads home that night. Whatever this thing is with Tricia, it’s obviously not, like, a _thing_ -thing. Not for Tricia, anyway. Tricia’s just happy to be able to get off with another person at last. As soon as she finds a guy who can do that for her, she’ll forget all about this thing she’s doing with Jonny.

Jonny wonders if Football Dude at the bar is that guy. She tortures herself with the idea that night, lying awake past her bedtime picturing Tricia lying sweaty and sated on the guy’s bed. But the next night, Tricia shows up at Jonny’s place while Seabs is out, and when Jonny’s done getting her off, she sighs and says, “Fuck, you’re so much better at that than Brad was.”

Jonny wishes she could say those words don’t go through her mind when she comes ten minutes later. But she’s not that good at lying to herself.

***

She can’t put off Greg much longer, once they’re not on the road. He’s trying to schedule a “real date,” as he calls it—by which, Jonny assumes, he means dinner. She’s being honest when she tells him that her schedule is complicated, but when he suggests a night between games when she doesn’t have anything else planned, she can’t find a reason to say no.

This is necessary, she reminds herself as she puts her makeup on. It’s the kind of thing that will make her fit in, and explain why she doesn’t pick up. See, she has a guy she’s dating. She’s interested in guys.

She’s…vaguely interested in the stuff Greg is saying about the consulting business. But not interested enough to last all of dinner, really. He’s just—he’s so polite. He’s never snarky, or rude, or silly, and maybe he’s trying to be on his best behavior or whatever, but Jonny can’t help but wish he were more like…

Well. There’s no point in thinking about who she wishes he were more like.

Greg’s hand lingers on her arm when he helps her with her coat. “Feel like coming back to my place?” he asks.

She hopes her face is showing the regret she isn’t feeling. “I can’t,” she says. “We’re flying to Colorado in the morning.”

It’s true, even if it’s not why she isn’t going. But it’s enough that she doesn’t feel shamefaced when she catches sight of Sharpy at the airport the next morning.

Sharpy, at least, is grinning. “Hear it went well last night,” she says as she walks in.

“Yeah, I guess,” Jonny says, and Sharpy grins salaciously and goes to sit by Burs.

“Last night?” Tricia asks, looking up from the plays she and Jonny have been going over.

“Oh, yeah,” Jonny says. “I, uh, had a date.”

“Yeah?” Tricia says. “How was it?”

“Fine. It was just this friend of Sharpy’s,” Jonny says, and then feels dumb. She’s not supposed to be downplaying this.

Tricia runs her fingers along the seam of the armrest between them. “Did he, um…” she starts to say, and then jerks her chin towards Jonny’s crotch. “You know?”

“Oh my God.” Jonny feels her face getting hot. “No. We just got dinner.”

“Okay,” Tricia says, laughing a little, probably at how embarrassed Jonny looks right now. “Well, maybe next time.”

“Sure,” Jonny says, even though she’s pretty sure Greg won’t be going down on her ever. She just wants to go back to telling Tricia how she’s wrong about Colorado’s goaltending.

They end up beating Colorado in a shootout, in one of those tense, focused games where every instant feels crystal clear. The team’s a little giddy afterward: the game was so hard-fought, and it’s their third win in a row after an abysmal start to the month. Jonny thinks Tricia’s going to want to go out, let off some steam, but as soon as they’re in the room Tricia’s pushing her back against the bed. “Come on, come on,” she says as Jonny gets with the program and pulls her pants off.

Tricia eats her out fast and dirty, and Jonny wails, “Tricia!” when she comes. It’s not like Tricia doesn’t call out her name sometimes, but still, it makes Jonny’s cheeks heat with shame afterward. It just feels…it’s way too honest.

Tricia doesn’t mention it—not directly. But afterward, when they’ve gone back to their own beds, she says, “You know, my family calls me Pat.”

Jonny looks up from her phone. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, like, all growing up.” Tricia pulls her tank top on. “I only started going by Tricia when I was like fifteen.”

“Really? Huh.” Jonny tries to imagine her as a Pat. She has a flash of memory—a locker room in Pennsylvania, a kid calling out, _Pat!_ “Why’d you change it?”

Tricia squints at her for a long moment. “You know, I always thought you were crazy, going into the NHL with a name like Jonny.”

Jonny’s stomach does something funny. “It’s my name.”

“Exactly.” Tricia gets up and stretches, back arching and breasts pulling up. “I guess you just carry it better.”

They’re quiet as they getting into bed. It’s like this a lot, after they get each other off: quiet. It makes Jonny wish she had some kind of skin-to-skin connection so they wouldn’t feel so separate.

She waits until she’s in bed, ready to lean in and turn the light out. “Hey,” she says. “Pat.”

Tricia looks up from her pillow, startled, and then she smiles. Jonny smiles back and clicks out the light.

She falls sleep with the image of that surprised pleasure behind her eyelids.

***

It’s hard to get the name in her mouth. Jonny’s not good at changing things up like that. She’s not even sure Tricia wants her to. But Jonny calls her that sometimes, in moments when they’re alone or when no one else is close enough to hear them, and Tricia always grins in this really helpless way that Jonny’s addicted to.

They’re spending more time together these days, usually over at Seabs’ place, sacked out on the couch playing video games and chirping each other. Jonny thinks it has something to do with the way whenever Seabs goes out, Tricia slides her hand onto Jonny’s thigh, and they head to the bedroom. Jonny’s certainly not complaining.

They go to a club in San Jose at the beginning of February, everyone happy to be out of the Chicago winter for a day or two. Jonny’s not looking forward to watching Tricia pick up some meathead again, though. She focuses on a conversation with Duncs while Tricia hits the dance floor, and she doesn’t look behind her until Tricia shows up and leans against her shoulder. “What?” Jonny asks, shouting over the club noise.

“Come dance!” Tricia shouts back, and tugs on Jonny’s arm.

Jonny shouldn’t follow. Yeah, they’re in San Jose, but they’re still with the team. But maybe it could be—it could be innocent. They could just be dancing near each other, scoping out the crowd. No one needs to know the way Jonny wants to dance with her.

The crowd is packed tight enough that they have to dance close, though. Tricia’s in a low-cut top, the swells of her breasts moving to the music, and there’s a sheen of sweat on her chest. Jonny wants to taste it.

“These guys are all assholes!” Tricia shouts above the music, and Jonny nods dumbly. The next thing she knows, Tricia’s pulling her close, pressing their hips together and sliding her hands around to grip Jonny’s ass.

Jonny sucks in air. Tricia’s moving against her now, little rolling motions of her hips that aren’t quite getting Jonny where it counts but are getting pretty darn close. They’re dancing—that’s all this is. They’re moving to the music. But Tricia’s so close, her hair in Jonny’s nose and her breath on Jonny’s neck and she has to be able to feel it: how hot Jonny’s body is from this. How much Jonny’s skin is prickling all over.

“What, don’t want to touch me?” Tricia shouts in her ear.

“I am touching you,” Jonny says, but Tricia just looks at her slyly, a challenge in her eyes that makes Jonny’s breathing pick up. She skims her hands over Tricia’s sides, sliding over the smooth satiny material of her shirt to pull her closer, and Tricia closes her eyes and tips her head back in pleasure.

Jonny wants so much. She wants to bend down and kiss Tricia’s neck. She wants to put her hands all over Tricia’s body, on the planes of her shoulder blades and the dip of her spine and the swell of her ass. The way they’re dancing now—they’re moving to the slow throbbing beat of the music, their bodies rubbing together, until both of them are panting and Tricia makes a frustrated noise and Jonny can’t help it: she gets her hands under Tricia’s ass and hitches her up so that their thighs can slot together.

It’s like a bolt of electricity. Tricia’s thigh presses just right against Jonny’s cunt, and Jonny’s eyes roll back in her head. “Fuuuuck,” Tricia says in her ear, just loud enough to be heard. She rides Jonny’s thigh, pressing into it, their jeans getting in the way but damn if it isn’t making Jonny soak through her underwear. She digs her fingers into Tricia’s ass and grinds them together hard enough that they both groan.

Their faces are so close. Jonny’s breathing Tricia in, both of them gasping for air. As she watches, Tricia’s eyelids flutter, her mouth falling open all pink and wet and perfect so that Jonny wants to—

Tricia’s eyes fly up to meet hers. They stare like that, eyes locked on each other, for a few gasping grinds, and Jonny can taste how badly she wants to kiss her. It’s there between them, in the heat of their eyes and the pink of their lips and the way Tricia’s eyes flick down, catching on Jonny’s open mouth and then looking up again, hot enough to catch fire.

They can’t. Not in public. Not with their teammates around.

Jonny closes her eyes and lets Tricia slide the few inches down her thigh. They stay pressed close, Tricia’s breath on Jonny’s collarbone. Jonny feels desire thrumming through her body, feels it through both of them, like they’re a circuit: Tricia trembling in her arms, Tricia, Pat, golden and brilliant and everything Jonny wants.

Tricia’s the one who raises her head. “Let’s go back,” she says into Jonny’s ear, her lips brushing the lobe. Jonny shudders and nods.

They separate to say goodbye to the team. Nothing out of the ordinary. But in the cab, Tricia throws her jacket on the seat between them, and they grip each other’s hands underneath, fingers twisting against each other while urgency winds a tighter and tighter spiral in Jonny’s stomach.

She doesn’t trust herself to look at Tricia in the elevator. But she can feel the heat of Tricia’s arm half an inch from hers, blazing like the sun at high noon, and she can hear Tricia breathing, fast and rough.

As soon as they’re through the door to their room, Tricia slams Jonny up against it and kisses her.

Jonny gasps into Tricia’s mouth like she’s just been bag-skated. Tricia isn’t being delicate about it: they’re attacking each other’s mouths, Jonny finally getting all the lips and teeth and tongue she’s wanted access to for so long. She slides a hand up Tricia’s shirt, under the satiny fabric, to find the hot smooth skin, and Tricia sucks on her tongue and Jonny feels all her control fly out the window.

It’s so much more of everything than she’s had before. Tricia’s all around her, pressed up against her with her tongue in Jonny’s mouth and her own hands going up Jonny’s shirt, unhooking Jonny’s bra. Then she’s thumbing Jonny’s nipples, nothing like the careful way Jonny first touched her breasts, but hard, almost painful. Jonny’s clit throbs with the touch, and she half-sobs into Tricia’s mouth, wanting so badly something she doesn’t even know how to grasp.

She goes for Tricia’s pants, because that’s something she does know. She follows them down with her hands, strokes over hips and thighs and ass, and Tricia makes little urgent encouraging sounds in her mouth. Then she pulls off Tricia’s shirt, and Tricia’s arching naked against her, grabbing at Jonny’s clothing like she’s angry with it. “Come on,” she says, a whine, and Jonny pulls off her own clothing, almost too clumsy with arousal to manage it.

Tricia tumbles them to the bed as soon as Jonny’s naked, and then they make out desperately for a few minutes, running their hands over each other’s bodies. Jonny wants to climb inside Tricia’s body, wants air but wants Tricia’s mouth more, wants the swell of Tricia’s breasts pressing against hers and her fingers digging into Tricia’s ass and Tricia’s harsh breath in her ears and wants it all forever, forever.

“I can’t,” Tricia says against Jonny’s mouth, and for a second Jonny is afraid. “I want to eat you out, but I can’t stop—”

“Here,” Jonny says, and she slides a leg between Tricia’s. “Sit up, I’ll—” She’s working half on instinct, half on vaguely remembered porn, and it shouldn’t work, maybe, but when her leg is up against Tricia’s shoulder and their cunts are aligned, Tricia rocks her hips down and they both gasp.

“Oh, fuck, Jonny,” Tricia says, eyes fluttering shut.

“Pat,” Jonny says, rolling her hips up. This is what she was desperate for: this, this. “Pat—”

Their cunts are slick against each other. It’s hard to get it quite right, hard to line up properly, but then they do and it’s like lightning: bolts of pleasure straight to Jonny’s brain, burning her body to ash on their way. Fire, licking up and down her limbs. Pat’s like the other half of a perfect system, finally, finally functioning the way it should: two pieces rocking against each other and everything lighting up. Jonny takes Pat’s hand, both of them slick with sweat, and grips hard as they work against each other.

“Fuck, this is so,” Pat gasps. “I never. Jonny. You feel so—”

Jonny can’t even speak. She thinks she’s making sounds, though: can hear them, these high-pitched moans that are escaping without her consent. She can’t control anything right now, though.

“Oh my God, Jonny, I’m gonna,” Pat says.

“Yeah,” Jonny says. She can feel it: the cliff they’re hurtling towards, everything shimmering around her. “Yeah, yeah,” she says, and Pat cries out, her hips rocking down harder and harder and that’s it, Jonny can’t, can’t do anything other than grind her hips up and come.

She comes so hard everything whites out for a minute, and then she hears herself again, little whimpers as she starts to come down. Pat’s on top of her, sweaty and disheveled, and Jonny opens her arms without thinking: takes her into her arms, cradles her against her chest.

Maybe she shouldn’t have done that, she thinks a moment later, when thought begins to trickle back into her brain. But Pat’s already in her arms by then, breathing hard and holding on tight. Jonny’s not about to push her away now.

It’s different, lying after orgasm with someone else’s body pressed against her. It’s different, having had sex with someone and not wanting to shove their body away when they collapse on top of you. It’s different, the way she wants to keep holding on without ever letting go.

“Wow,” Pat says, and the word echoes around Jonny’s stomach cavity. 

Jonny wants to say so much. She wants to ask so much. But it’s safer not to, safer not even to let herself form the questions in her mind, and so she breathes and holds on and doesn’t speak.

She slides a hand into Pat’s hair, though. Cups the back of her neck, smooths a thumb over her cheekbone and feels the flush on her skin. And when Pat finally gets up, a little while later, when their skin is getting cold and they need to brush their teeth and get ready for bed, Jonny lets herself pull Pat down and take a kiss. Just one last one, in case this never happens again.

Pat kisses back, soft and sweet. And then she slips out of Jonny’s grasp.

***

Jonny wakes up the next morning with her stomach already full of the memory. She feels it spread down to the tips of her toes as she stretches, and she opens her eyes to look at the other bed.

It’s already empty. The alarm hasn’t gone off, but Tricia’s already up.

A moment later her head pops in from the bathroom. “Oh, you’re up,” Tricia says, and Jonny thinks, _Pat._

It’s just a childhood nickname. It shouldn’t make Jonny’s body go warm, thinking of it. Shouldn’t change Tricia into someone who feels almost like someone Jonny can have.

Jonny bites her lip. Not someone Jonny can have. No matter what happened last night, not someone Jonny can have.

Probably. Unless…

Tricia comes out of the bathroom. She’s already dressed, something short and flouncy, and she’s headed for the door. “I’m gonna go down to breakfast. Have you seen my lipstick?”

“Um, I think it’s by the coffee maker,” Jonny says, and watches as Tricia grabs it and waves and goes out the door.

Jonny thunks her head down onto her knees. Not someone she can have.


	6. Chapter 6

Jonny may not have everything she wants, but she has so much more than she ever thought she would. She has Tricia sitting next to her at breakfast, complaining that all the one-percent milk is gone. She has her on the team bus later that day, a laptop between them, arguing about game tape and getting loud until Duncs shushes them. She has her next to her on the couch when they’re back in Chicago, playing Seabs’ video games and brushing arms in a way that makes Jonny shiver. She has her, in stolen magical moments that she can’t quite believe are happening, spread out on the bed and moaning under her fingers and tongue.

When Jonny entered the draft, she assumed she’d never get to have anyone like this. Even before that—when she started to realize what it meant, that she had to keep herself from looking at other girls’ breasts in the locker room. She thought she’d never get to have sex with someone she wanted to have sex with, someone who makes her smile helplessly with dumb texts about romcoms or her sisters’ haircuts or whatever. Someone who can be the best part of her life every day.

Greg calls, when they get back to Chicago. “I was hoping I could see you again soon,” he says. “Want to come over to my place some night this week? I can cook for us,” he adds, and Jonny maybe hasn’t dated that much in her life, but she knows what that means.

It would be the smart thing to do. Word would get back to Sharpy; it would be solid evidence that, look, Joanna Toews is a real Canadian girl. It would get back to Tricia, make it clear that Jonny doesn’t think this is more than it is.

She opens her mouth to say yes, and the words won’t come.

“I can’t,” she says, after a long minute. “I’m sorry. I wish I could. I just…don’t think this is the right thing for me right now.”

“Oh,” he says. He sounds surprised. “Um, yeah, of course, I’m sorry. I…good luck, I guess?”

Jonny huffs a laugh. She’s not even sure why; it’s just so ridiculous. “Yeah,” she says. “Thanks for everything.”

She’s expecting to be chirped for it at practice the next day. But maybe Greg doesn’t go running to Andy and Sharpy about it, because a couple of days later, Sharpy jabs her with a skate guard in the locker room and says, “Seeing Greg anytime soon?”

“Oh,” Jonny says, surprised. She hadn’t thought she’d have to deliver this news herself. “Uh, no, actually. We’re not seeing each other anymore.”

“What?” Tricia’s head pops up a few stalls over. “Why not?”

Tricia sounds…really surprised. Not that Jonny would have expected anything else. They’re not in a relationship. But…really? Tricia can’t imagine any reason Jonny might not want to see Greg anymore?

“Just wasn’t feeling it,” Jonny says.

Sharpy snorts. “See if I waste one of my high-quality setups on you again.”

“Hey, Jonny can pick up on her own,” Tricia says. “She has great taste in guys.”

“Yeah, for throwing away,” Sharpy says. “Poor form, Toes.”

Jonny bites her lip and focuses on her gear. It’s much better than she not say anything right now.

***

It doesn’t change anything, Tricia’s response. But it’s a reminder, and it might make her quiet for a few days, just a little. She’s not moping, whatever Seabs says.

“You’re, like, glued to the couch,” Seabs says on the third morning, and, okay, Jonny has been spending a lot of time lying here when she’s not at the rink. “My couch doesn’t deserve this.”

“It’ll deserve what I tell it to,” Jonny mumbles. It totally makes sense.

Seabs kicks the leg of the couch. “Get up. We’re going to Starbucks.”

Being up and about does make Jonny feel a little better. She gets herself a venti mocha latte and ignores the eyebrows Seabs raises at her. She can break her nutrition plan if she wants to.

She goes to sit while Seabs stays at the counter to gaze longingly the muffins. She’s been...kind of dumb about the whole Tricia thing, she realizes. She hasn’t actually lost anything. Tricia hasn’t even pulled away from her. Jonny still has exactly what she thought she had, which is a teammate and friend who's frustrating as hell and amazing to spend time with and sometimes gives her toe-curling orgasms. So what if that’s all it is? It’s, like. It’s really not a bad deal.

“Hey, are you using this chair?” someone asks. Jonny waves her hand, and the girl takes the chair back to her table, where she’s sitting with another girl. The other girl smiles at her, really sweet, like—

Jonny stares. Doesn’t mean to, but she does. She knows there are gay couples out there, all over the place, but she still can’t quite believe she’s seeing one in front of her. The first girl has long brown hair that’s up in a curly ponytail, and the second one has a pixie cut, sharp against the bones of her face, the kind Jonny would love to have if she didn’t have to worry about her image. They’re leaning towards each other, bright and laughing, like maybe this is a new thing, and the second girl, the one with the pixie cut, leans in and feeds the other one a bite of her cookie.

Jonny looks down at the table. She shouldn’t be watching this. It feels too private. She wonders if they’re together this morning because they were together last night. If they slept in the same bed together, wrapped in each other’s arms. If—

“I caved and got the blueberry,” Seabs says, plopping down in the chair across from her. “You’re right—sometimes you gotta break the diet plan. You want any?”

“No, thanks,” Jonny says. Her stomach aches too much to eat anything right now.

***

She wasn’t sure, after the time with the club, if kissing was going to be a normal thing now. But apparently it is, because as soon as Seabs goes out the door on Sunday night, Tricia’s straddling Jonny’s lap and licking into her mouth.

“God, it’s been so long,” Tricia says between kisses. “Does it feel like it’s been so long?”

It’s been like five days. But it feels like it’s been too long to Jonny about two seconds after Tricia slips out of her arms every time they do this, so. She just makes a vague noise of agreement.

“Probably means I need to pick up more,” Tricia mumbles, and the words hit Jonny in the gut, but then Tricia’s mouth is on hers again and it’s hard to care.

Jonny has her hands up the back of Tricia’s shirt, and Tricia’s making these hungry little sounds and trying to grind down on her, when Tricia pulls back and says, “This isn’t working.”

“It’s not?” Jonny asks, heart skipping several beats. Tricia’s in front of her, lips swollen red and eyes wild, and Jonny knew this was going to end but she thought she’d at least have—

“No, we gotta go to the bed, come on,” Tricia says, grabbing Jonny’s hand and getting up.

Jonny trails after her, weak with relief, and then she gets Tricia’s naked skin against her again, gets her one more time even if this all ends tomorrow.

“You just feel so good,” Tricia says, when she’s on top of Jonny, rocking down and making Jonny’s eyes cross with pleasure, and how the fuck is Jonny supposed to remember that this isn’t a real thing?

It feels like a real thing, when Tricia’s lying damply across Jonny’s chest afterward, idly playing with Jonny’s nipple. “What do you think about the Avs’ defense?” Tricia asks, and Jonny has a flash of it: how it could be, the two of them screwing around like this and then curling up together and talking hockey, always and forever and like a real thing she can keep.

“I don’t know, I feel like any team Sakic’s on doesn’t need defense,” Jonny says, and Tricia starts the requisite chirping for hero worship. Jonny will take it; it’s better than thinking about things she can’t allow herself to want.

***

They go on a two-week road trip following the All-Star break. It’s bad timing for Jonny, since it means constantly being around Tricia. It’s great, don’t get her wrong—the thing where they hook up almost every night is fantastic, and, fuck, there’s this one time Tricia wakes her up with coffee and then goes down on her and Jonny’s still weak in the knees at skate that morning, but…

The point is, if she was trying to get Tricia out of her head, this road trip isn’t helping.

Jonny thinks maybe some other people on the team have started to notice. Sometimes she gets lost looking at Tricia when Tricia’s talking to other people, all animated and dimply, and when Jonny finally catches herself and pulls her eyes away, Sharpy’s looking at her with a gaze that makes Jonny straighten her back and prickle with sweat.

If Sharpy knows…she hasn’t said anything, though. Maybe she thinks it’s nothing, just an over-intense friendship or whatever. Jonny’s not shy about admiring Tricia’s hockey. Maybe Sharpy thinks that’s it.

Either way, it’s clear to Jonny that she’s in trouble here. She hasn’t picked up in ages. She really need to do that, in one of these cities they swing through: show Sharpy she’s still into guys, show Tricia she gets what they’re doing here.

It’s hard to get herself to do it, though. They go out in Edmonton, and Jonny can drink here—that would definitely make it easier to pick up. But Tricia’s leaning against her, rambling about ways they can do better on the power play, and getting up and walking away to find someone’s dick to stick inside of her just sounds really unappealing.

They’re going to Calgary next. Jonny can pick up there.

But in Calgary, the team is high off a win, and Jonny doesn’t want to leave that happy hum of energy to find a dude to fuck. After that it’s Vancouver, and Jonny’s totally gonna do it—gotta take advantage of being in Canada before she goes back to being underage—but they lose, in a fucking shootout, and Tricia hides their hands between their bodies on the bus and plays with Jonny’s fingers and Jonny goes up with her and has sleepy comfort sex before passing out in Tricia’s bed.

She doesn’t mean to fall asleep there—she was just going to close her eyes for a few minutes and then get up and go to her own. But she’s wiped from playing, and Tricia’s snug up against her, and the next thing Jonny knows her alarm is going off and Tricia is blinking at her with sleepy blue eyes in the morning sunlight.

Fuck. Jonny—Jonny is in way too deep here.

They have a monster of a game in Columbus, seven to two, and Jonny needs to take action. Screw being able to drink; she has to do it, tonight, before she loses her nerve and her dignity and whatever else she has left here.

“What do you think of the guy by that painting?” she asks Tricia while they’re drinking their sadly legal sodas.

Tricia doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Jonny has a flare of hope—that maybe Tricia cares, maybe she doesn’t want her to do this—but then Tricia says, “Oh, yeah. Great ass.”

Five minutes later, the guy is monologuing to her about supply and demand over pretentious beers. Jonny nods in the right places and tries not to yawn.

It occurs to her, as he extols the virtues of the free market economy, that maybe she doesn’t even need to hook up with him. Maybe it’s enough to sit here and nod and smile at his jokes. When she looks back at the Hawks’ table, though, she sees that Tricia is watching, so Jonny probably needs to follow through. 

“Hey,” she says, leaning closer when there’s a pause his diatribe. “Do you live around here?”

Kenneth (“not Ken”) puts his hand in the small of her back when they go over to get her coat. Jonny wants to pull away, but she sets her jaw and sticks with it. She just needs to do this once—make it clear she’s still who she’s supposed to be. Just once, and she’ll be in the clear for months.

Tricia’s not at the table when Jonny grabs her coat and purse. Jonny’s glad; she’s not sure she could have gone through with this with Tricia right there. Duncs and Seabs wolf-whistle her as she walks out, so word will spread, anyway.

Kenneth hails a cab, explaining how “you have to be forceful, not let them get away with ignoring you,” like Jonny lives in some podunk town in the middle of nowhere and not Chicago. In the cab, he’s quieter, but he closes his fingers over her hand, and it’s all Jonny can do not to tug it away.

He won’t be the worst guy she’s hooked up with. He’s pretty cute, at least. And he isn’t bigger than her. Jonny isn’t in the mood to be thrown around by someone bigger than her. Someone Kenneth’s size, she doesn’t have anything to worry about.

“Hey,” Kenneth says, and when Jonny looks up, he leans in to kiss her.

There’s a moment where she sees his face coming towards her and she thinks, _close your eyes and picture Tricia._ Then her breath catches in her throat and she puts her hand out blindly to stop him.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Sorry.” Then, louder, to the cab driver, “Can we stop?”

The cab doesn’t slow down. “Sorry?” he says in accented English.

“Stop here, please,” she says again, loudly. “I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck?” Kenneth asks.

Jonny’s pulse is thundering in her ears. “I just need to—thanks,” she says, because the cab driver has pulled over to the side of the road. She grabs a few twenties from her purse and gives them to Kenneth. “Drive him home,” she says to the driver, and goes for the door handle.

“No, wait.” Kenneth grabs at her wrist. “What are you…”

Jonny thinks about breaking his grip—she could do it so easily—but then she remembers the PR lectures, remembers Deadspin. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I…thought I was over someone. But I’m not.”

The confusion on his face softens just a hair, and it’s enough for Jonny to get her wrist out of his grip and get out of the cab. Then she’s free, on the pavement, her hair whipping around her face in the winter wind as the cab’s taillights disappear into the distance.

She doesn’t know how far she is from the bar. She doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing here.

She ends up walking back to the hotel, because it’s not actually as far as she thought and she needs to kill some time if she’s supposed to be hooking up. Mostly what she feels on the walk is relief: that she didn’t have to go through with it. That she accomplished what she needed to, made people think the things they’re supposed to think, and she didn’t actually have to put her body against his. Didn’t have to take him inside her.

She should have thought of this years ago.

It’s still cold, even through her down coat, and she keeps thinking about how much she wants to go back to the hotel room and curl up with Tricia. Not for sex—that would obviously be weird tonight—but it’s okay, because she doesn’t even really want sex right now. She just wants…to lie in the same bed, maybe, pressed close together to watch a movie on a laptop. Tricia warm against her. Whispering sleepy words in the darkness. That’s what Jonny wants.

Tricia’s in the room when Jonny gets back. “Hey,” she says, looking up from her phone with a smile when Jonny comes in. “Have a good time?”

“Uh, yeah, it was okay.” Jonny shrugs her coat off. “What are you doing?”

Tricia has her phone in her hand, her iPod in the other, her laptop in front of her, and like three different charging cables in a tangle around her on the bed. “Trying to get iTunes to sync,” she says. “Jess has been giving me pointers. Apparently I’m old and hopeless now.”

“Well, we already knew that,” Jonny says automatically. She wants to sit down on Tricia’s bed, but there’s a lot of cables and stuff. It’s hard to know where she would go.

She sits on her own bed instead. “Did you guys have fun at the bar after I left?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tricia says. “This guy kept trying to buy Sharpy shots. It was hilarious.”

Her tone is really bright. Maybe almost too bright—like she’s forcing it? But no; Jonny’s pretty sure she’s trying too hard to read into things. “She take them?”

“No, duh. We have a game tomorrow.” Tricia stretches out a little, tapping at her phone, probably still talking to Jess. “Hope that guy didn’t get you too sore.”

Jonny’s stomach turns over sickly. “No, I think I’ll be okay.”

“Good.” Tricia shoots her a smile, and for a second Jonny has that feeling again, the one where everything’s off, just one step to the side—but then it’s gone, and Tricia’s standing up and shaking the cables off of herself. “Okay, I give up. I’m going to bed. I’m just gonna share your iPod tomorrow.”

“I’m gonna play Bryan Adams,” Jonny calls as Tricia disappears into the bathroom.

“Oh God,” Tricia says, mouth thick with toothpaste. “Forget it. I’ll just stab myself in the ears instead,” and everything is normal. Why wouldn’t it be normal?


	7. Chapter 7

Everything’s still normal the next day, when they get up too early and drag themselves to the lobby. Jonny’s groggy, because mornings suck, and Tricia laughs at her as they get onto the bus for the airport. There’s a moment where Jonny sits down and it seems like Tricia might be hesitating to sit down next to her. But then she does, just like she always does, and Jonny isn’t sure there was really a delay at all.

There are a couple more moments like that. When Jonny says something, and it takes Tricia a second longer than it usually would to react. Or they’re walking into the airport, and Jonny realizes Tricia’s drifted back so they’re not as near to each other in the crowd. But when Jonny waits for her to catch up, Tricia sticks by her side, and it feels totally normal and Jonny thinks she might be going insane.

She figures it out on the plane. They’re an hour into their flight to Nashville, and Tricia’s conked out against the window, Jonny’s earbud forgotten in her ear, and Jonny realizes that the reason she keeps thinking things are weird is because she wants them to be.

She hooked up with a guy last night. To all appearances, anyway. And Tricia’s being normal about it. Jonny keeps trying to see weirdness where weirdness doesn’t exist, because she wants that to be a thing that creates weirdness, but it just isn’t there. Tricia knows that she hooked up with a guy last night and she’s totally fine with it.

Jonny stares at the ugly fabric of the seat back in front of her and lets that one sink in. Tricia knows she hooked up with a guy last night. And she’s fine with it.

Jonny hadn’t realized that was why she hooked up with the guy. In part, anyway: all her other reasons were true, too, but she was also doing it in the hope that it would goad Tricia into…something. Anything. Something that would prove Jonny wrong about this thing between them.

That was a shitty thing to do, probably, but it doesn’t matter, because Jonny wasn’t wrong. She wasn’t wrong, and the knowledge sits like a rock in her stomach, solid amid the vibrations of the plane.

Seabs goes by on the way to the bathroom and does a double take at Jonny’s face. Jonny dredges up a smile, and Seabs looks unconvinced but passes by.

They land in Nashville, and the knowledge of how big an idiot she’s been sits heavily on Jonny as they get on the bus, as they arrive at their hotel, as she and Tricia get their matching room keys. There’s a display of roses and hearts in the lobby of the hotel, and Jonny stares at it for a solid minute before she remembers that it’s Valentine’s Day. Fucking perfect.

Tricia doesn’t suggest that they mess around before their nap. That’s not unexpected—they had an early morning, and they need rest for the game—but it is a relief. Jonny doesn’t think she could right now. They lie down in their separate beds and Jonny waits for the ache to drain out of her chest so that she can fall asleep.

***

The game, though. _The game._

It’s always a good feeling, coming off of a big win, and they come at Nashville fast and hit them hard. They pull off a six-one blowout, and it feels like everyone scores: Jonny does, and Tricia does, and then Jonny again, and after Jonny’s second goal, Tricia crashes into her with a smile that’s huge and bright and real and Jonny thinks, _Maybe I’ll be in love with her forever._

It’s a weirdly okay thought. It feels like the truth: that Jonny will probably be in love with her forever, because what could ever change this feeling? It’s gonna suck, probably, for years and years, but Jonny would rather feel this way than not.

_I choose you,_ she thinks on the bus on the way back to the hotel, and Tricia isn’t choosing her back, but that’s okay. Jonny will take as much as she can get for as long as she can get it and damn the consequences.

It’s a good realization for Valentine’s Day. It feels fitting.

None of the team goes out that night, because their flight is stupidly early the next morning. But they’re rowdy in the lobby, quieting down only when the desk clerk gives them the third or fourth dirty look. “Okay, hanging out in our room,” Sharpy says, slinging an arm around Burs. “Who’s in?”

“Tired,” Tricia says, mouth stretching in a yawn.

Jonny’s pulse picks up, because she knows what that probably means. “Yeah, I’m gonna turn in, too,” she says.

She doesn’t get to follow Tricia back to their room right away, because her and Duncs’ garment bags got mixed up, and they have to straighten that out before Jonny ends up in an ill-fitting plaid game-day dress. When she does get to the room, she’s already turned on in anticipation of what they’ll do. Turned on and a little anxious, hoping she can keep it together. But she wants this, even if it’s all she can get.

Tricia’s in the bathroom when Jonny comes into the room. “Have you seen my phone charger?” she calls out.

“I think you left it plugged in behind the desk,” Jonny says.

“Oh, right.” Tricia comes out of the bathroom, already in her pajamas. She’s wearing the white tank top again, the one that leaves basically nothing to the imagination, and Jonny can’t help but stare a little. “I gotta get a phone that holds a charge better. My sisters need to hear about that goal.”

Jonny sits at the end of her bed while Tricia fishes her phone charger from behind the desk. Tricia’s usually been the one to initiate things between them, and Jonny doesn’t want to mess with that pattern. But maybe, if this is the way things are going to be from now on, maybe she should start getting more comfortable with it. Asking for the things she can have.

She waits until Tricia’s straightened up and is plugging in her phone. “Hey, do you want to…” she says, and then she sees it. She sees the same momentary stillness she thought she was imagining this morning, only this time it’s definitely real. Tricia freezes, her back to the room, and Jonny can see the tension in her shoulders.

“Shit,” Tricia says. “Shit. I thought I could…I’m sorry.”

Jonny’s heart is picking up speed. She’s not sure if it’s hope or fear. “Huh?”

“I can’t do this,” Tricia says. “Fuck, I…” She turns halfway around, runs her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. This is so dumb.”

She’s still not facing Jonny, and her hands are covering most of her face, but Jonny’s chest is fluttering wildly. She knows how to fix this. She almost definitely knows how to fix this. “Is this about last night?” she asks. “Because I didn’t—”

“No,” Tricia says. “It’s not that, it’s just…fuck. I hate you sometimes, you know that?”

Okay, that’s not what Jonny was expecting. “What?” she says.

“You don’t have to do all of the…” Tricia waves her hands at Jonny, like that’s supposed to mean something. “You just show up, all tall and good at hockey and somehow that’s enough, you don’t have to _try_ —”

“Of course I have to try,” Jonny says, nonplussed.

“You go by _Jonny,_ ” Tricia spits. Her eyes are red-rimmed, with fury or—Jonny doesn’t know what. She’s seen Tricia cry before, at movies, with her family, but not like this. “You don’t even wear skirts most of the time. And no one _cares_. It’s like you have some magical pass, so that you don’t have to care about their stupid rules, and I just can’t—”

Jonny’s not sure when she stood up, but she’s standing now, and she takes the three steps to Tricia. Tricia’s crying now, tears running down her cheeks, and when Jonny takes her by the arms, Tricia leans into her and thunks her head against Jonny’s chest. Jonny can feel her trembling. “I think I’m gay,” Tricia says into Jonny’s chest, and Jonny—

Jonny doesn’t laugh. She has to take in a great gulp of air not to do so, and she feels something rocketing through her, giddy and wild. She leans down and presses her nose to Tricia’s curls. “I realized I wanted to stare at other girls’ breasts in the locker room when I was fourteen,” she says, and she feels the way Tricia goes a little bit stiller against her.

It’s crazy, saying it out loud. Jonny feels like she’s plugged into a current, sparks snapping out of the ends of her fingers. “I hooked up with my first girl in college,” she goes on. “She was the only other girl I ever hooked up with until you, because I couldn’t take the risk. But I hate having sex with men. I’ve always—I hate it.”

Tricia lifts her head, staring at Jonny with round eyes. “But last night—”

“I didn’t actually hook up with that guy,” Jonny says. “I left him in the cab. I was just trying to look normal. I’m not as good at it as you, but—”

“I’m not. I can’t do it anymore.” Tricia presses her forehead against Jonny’s cheek. “I want to be normal, and then every time you touch me…”

“So don’t.” Jonny aches from having her this close, from the words they’re saying. “Don’t be normal. Be—be mine.”

Tricia sucks in a breath, and then her mouth is on Jonny’s.

It’s so much better, kissing Tricia and knowing that Tricia wants this. Jonny’s full of the knowledge, feels it romping through her bloodstream, spinning through her body like fireworks. She buries her hands in Tricia’s hair and presses closer and kisses her.

Tricia’s breathing hard by the time she breaks the kiss and runs her hands up under Jonny’s shirt. “I can’t stop thinking about your breasts,” she says, and a thrill shoots up Jonny’s spine. “Just—my mouth on them.”

“Don’t hold back,” Jonny chokes out, and lifts her arms so Tricia can pull her shirt over her head and unhook her bra.

They’re both trembling again, but not like Tricia was before. Jonny trembles when Tricia trails her fingers up her ribcage, when she licks up the side of Jonny’s breast, when she rocks their hips together just right. “Fuck,” Jonny says, and starts fumbling with her pants.

“Jonny,” Tricia says, “I want…”

“Yeah?” Jonny says, distracted by the skin behind Tricia’s ear, and when she looks up, Tricia’s eyes go straight to her mouth. Tricia licks into her mouth, lush and deep, and then sucks Jonny’s tongue into hers, and Jonny knows what she wants.

“Fuck, I couldn’t believe when you did this the first time,” Tricia says, when Jonny’s tumbled her back onto the bed and is peeling off Tricia’s underwear. “It was totally different from anytime anyone else had ever touched me, and I thought it was just what you were doing, but—oh. _Oh._ ”

Jonny’s licking into her now, tasting her and lapping her up and thinking, _This is mine._ She can have this, in a way she couldn’t before. Tricia, wet and shaking under her touch and wanting her.

“Oh God, do that again,” Tricia says, pushing into it as Jonny licks over her clit. “I got off to this so many times, you don’t even know. Every time I was with a guy, I would picture—ah!”

Jonny moans against her. The words are doing it for her, the words and Tricia’s wet hot cunt, getting hotter under her mouth. Tricia’s devolved into swearing above her, strings of “fuck” and “God,” and this is something Jonny can keep. She can do this to Tricia so many times, and be honest about how much she wants it. She can—fuck, she can let Tricia see how turned on she gets by it.

She does the thing she’s wanted to do since the first time she ate Tricia out: she slips a hand into her own underwear as she licks. She hears Tricia shifting above her, and then saying, “Oh fuck, Jonny, are you—argh,” and then her breath is panting out of her and hips are twitching and she’s riding Jonny’s mouth to a straining finish.

Jonny looks up at her, fingers still pressing against her own clit. Tricia’s red-faced and lost-looking, sprawled against the pillows and looking at Jonny like she just rescued her from certain death or something. “Get up here so I can do you,” she says, and Jonny swallows but doesn’t move.

“Have you ever had multiple orgasms?” she asks, and she sees Tricia’s cunt clench.

“Um,” Tricia says, her voice half gone, and Jonny grins and licks in again.

She makes Tricia come three times, and by then she’s so turned on herself that she only has to ride Tricia’s hand for a minute or two before she’s there: the world sparkling, all the tension finally exploding out of her. After, they breathe quietly next to each other, Jonny playing with the long strands of Tricia’s curls.

“I thought about getting it cut,” Tricia says. “A few weeks ago. I was walking by a barbershop and I almost went in.”

Jonny stretches out a curl. “You don’t like it long?”

“No, I do,” Tricia says. “It’s just—what I was saying before.” She has one hand tucked under her face, and she’s looking at Jonny with sleepy blue eyes. “I just sometimes feel like I’m stuck with it, you know? With how I present myself. Like people expect it and now I have to do it.”

“And you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to feel like it’s all I can be,” Tricia says. “Sometimes I want…” She runs her finger down Jonny’s side, over the dip of her waist, and Jonny shivers. “I don’t want to feel like there’s something wrong with me, when I don’t match what they expect.”

Jonny has to kiss her at that. Tricia’s mouth is soft and warm and wonderful and Jonny never wants it to go away.

“We could tell the team,” she says, when their mouths part.

“Hm?” Tricia says.

“About us.” Jonny swallows against the flutters of nervousness in her gut. “If you want to show that you’re something different. I mean, not that I’m assuming—if you want to keep—if there’s something to tell, I mean."

“Idiot,” Tricia says, and when she pecks Jonny’s lips, both their mouths are stretched into grins. “You would want that? The team to know?”

“I mean, it would be...tough,” Jonny says. Her heart is beating fast just thinking about it. “But if you wanted them to know, I...yeah.”

“Maybe.” Tricia tucks her arm around Jonny’s waist. Her eyes are bright, her body is flush with Jonny’s, and Jonny is so happy. “Or maybe we’ll let them figure it out for themselves.”

***

Seabs figures it out first. More specifically, she walks in on them making out with their shirts off on the couch one day, and then she yelps and runs back out.

“Well, I guess there’s no point in fighting it now,” Jonny says.

They decide to cut to the chase. They wait until it’s just the team in the locker room, one day after a solid win, and then Jonny crowds Tricia up against the lockers. “Good game,” she says, and pulls her into a kiss.

There’s a scream from the middle of the locker room. Jonny whirls around to see Sharpy staring at them, eyes wide. “I cannot tell you how furious I am that I didn’t know about this,” Sharpy says.

Something in Jonny’s chest unravels, and she feels herself smiling. “Seabs knew last week,” she says, and watches as Sharpy rounds on Seabs.

Tricia leans against her side while the rest of the locker room alternates between watching Sharpy and Seabs wrestle and continuing to gape at Jonny and Tricia. “I think it’s gonna be okay,” Tricia says.

It won’t be easy—that’s for sure. A lot of people are still staring, and Jonny can’t read what they’re thinking. But Sharpy and Seabs are laughing and Duncs is looking at Jonny with a big smile on her face and Tricia is at her side. “Yeah,” Jonny says. “I think it will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](https://linskywords.tumblr.com/)!


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